[Peace-discuss] Fwd: Secret U.S. Plans For Iraq's Oil from
gregpalast.com
Paul Mueth
paulmueth at yahoo.com
Thu Mar 17 11:16:48 CST 2005
The oiligarchy is still at it, so is Palast .. .
the newsnight programm(e) is available for 24 hours
starting 6pm our time
I don't have capacity to capture realvideo, it would
be great if someone who can would .. .
Sorry if this is redundant
cheers
Greg Palast's film - the result of a joint
investigation by BBC Newsnight and Harper's Magazine
- will broadcast on Thursday, 17 March, 2005.
You can watch the program online - available
Thursday, March 17 after 7pm EST for 24hrs - from
the Newsnight website:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/newsnight/default.stm
You can also read the story in greater detail in the
latest issue of Harper's magazine - now available at
your local newsstand.
SECRET U.S. PLANS FOR IRAQ'S OIL
By Greg Palast
Reporting for BBC Newsnight
17 March 2005
The Bush administration made plans for war and for
Iraq's oil before the 9/11 attacks sparking a policy
battle between neo-cons and Big Oil, BBC's Newsnight
has revealed.
Two years ago today - when President George Bush
announced US, British and Allied forces would begin
to bomb Baghdad - protestors claimed the US had a
secret plan for Iraq's oil once Saddam had been
conquered.
In fact there were two conflicting plans, setting
off a hidden policy war between neo-conservatives at
the Pentagon, on one side, versus a combination of
"Big Oil" executives and US State Department
"pragmatists."
"Big Oil" appears to have won. The latest plan,
obtained by Newsnight from the US State Department
was, we learned, drafted with the help of American
oil industry consultants.
Insiders told Newsnight that planning began "within
weeks" of Bush's first taking office in 2001, long
before the September 11th attack on the US.
An Iraqi-born oil industry consultant Falah
Aljibury
says he took part in the secret meetings in
California, Washington and the Middle East. He
described a State Department plan for a forced coup
d'etat.
Mr Aljibury himself told Newsnight that he
interviewed potential successors to Saddam Hussein
on behalf of the Bush administration.
Secret sell-off plan
The industry-favored plan was pushed aside by yet
another secret plan, drafted just before the
invasion in 2003, which called for the sell-off of
all of Iraq's oil fields. The new plan, crafted by
neo-conservatives intent on using Iraq's oil to
destroy the Opec cartel through massive increases in
production above Opec quotas.
The sell-off was given the green light in a secret
meeting in London headed by Ahmed Chalabi shortly
after the US entered Baghdad, according to Robert
Ebel. Mr. Ebel, a former Energy and CIA oil
analyst, now a fellow at the Center for Strategic
and International Studies in Washington, flew to the
London meeting, he told Newsnight, at the request of
the State Department.
Mr Aljibury, once Ronald Reagan's "back-channel"
to
Saddam, claims that plans to sell off Iraq's oil,
pushed by the US-installed Governing Council in
2003, helped instigate the insurgency and attacks on
US and British occupying forces.
"Insurgents used this, saying, 'Look, you're losing
your country, your losing your resources to a bunch
of wealthy billionaires who want to take you over
and make your life miserable," said Mr Aljibury from
his home near San Francisco.
"We saw an increase in the bombing of oil
facilities, pipelines, built on the premise that
privatization is coming."
Privatization blocked by industry
Philip Carroll, the former CEO of Shell Oil USA who
took control of Iraq's oil production for the US
Government a month after the invasion, stalled the
sell-off scheme.
Mr Carroll told us he made it clear to Paul Bremer,
the US occupation chief who arrived in Iraq in May
2003, that: "There was to be no privatization of
Iraqi oil resources or facilities while I was
involved."
The chosen successor to Mr Carroll, a Conoco Oil
executive, ordered up a new plan for a state oil
company preferred by the industry.
Ari Cohen, of the neo-conservative Heritage
Foundation, told Newsnight that an opportunity had
been missed to privatize Iraq's oil fields. He
advocated the plan as a means to help the US defeat
Opec, and said America should have gone ahead with
what he called a "no-brainer" decision.
Mr Carroll hit back, telling Newsnight, "I would
agree with that statement. To privatize would be a
no-brainer. It would only be thought about by
someone with no brain."
New plans, obtained from the State Department by
Newsnight and Harper's Magazine under the US Freedom
of Information Act, called for creation of a
state-owned oil company favored by the US oil
industry. It was completed in January 2004,
Harper's discovered, under the guidance of Amy Jaffe
of the James Baker Institute in Texas. Former US
Secretary of State Baker is now an attorney. His
law firm, Baker Botts, is representing ExxonMobil
and the Saudi Arabian government.
View segments of Iraq oil plans at
www.GregPalast.com/opeconthemarch.html
Questioned by Newsnight, Ms Jaffe said the oil
industry prefers state control of Iraq's oil over a
sell-off because it fears a repeat of Russia's
energy privatization. In the wake of the collapse of
the Soviet Union, US oil companies were barred from
bidding for the reserves.
Jaffe said "There is no question that an American
oil company ... would not be enthusiastic about a
plan that would privatize all the assets with Iraq
companies and they (US companies) might be left out
of the transaction."
In addition, Ms. Jaffe says US oil companies are
not
warm to any plan that would undermine Opec, "They
[oil companies] have to worry about the price of
oil.
"I'm not sure that if I'm the chair of an American
company, and you put me on a lie detector test, I
would say high oil prices are bad for me or my
company."
The former Shell oil boss agrees. In Houston, he
told Newsnight, "Many neo-conservatives are people
who have certain ideological beliefs about markets,
about democracy, about this that and the other.
International oil companies without exception are
very pragmatic commercial organizations. They
don't have a theology."
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