According to this report in the Christian Science Monitor, “The reason Iraq needs to pass a new oil law, President Bush has said, is to ‘share oil revenues among all of Iraq’s citizens’ – Sunnis, Shiites, and Kurds – and to help unify the country.”
The Monitor goes on to report, however: “Fueling new resistance to the oil benchmark are reports that the draft law in fact says little about sharing oil revenues among Iraqi groups and a lot about setting up a framework for investment that may be disadvantageous to Iraqis over the long term.”
That investment would be by oil companies. You know, Exxon/Mobil, Chevron, Shell and BP, what’s left of the seven sisters (Gulf and Texaco were the other two). Iraq is thought to have the world’s second largest oil reserves (after Saudi Arabia), some 110 gigabarrels.
Until about a generation ago most of the world’s oil was controlled by the oil companies. Today more than 75% is controlled by governments — and the oil companies have been trying to take that control back.
This is why we invaded Iraq; and it’s why we can’t leave until the Iraqi oil law is passed and control is securely in the hands of those Iraqis who will follow the law.
The rest is smoke and mirrors.