[Mb-civic] Secret U.S. Plans for Iraq's Oil By Greg Palast

[Michael Butler]

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    Secret U.S. Plans for Iraq's Oil
    By Greg Palast
    OfficialWire

    Thursday 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.

    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."

    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
7 pm EST for 24-hrs - from the Newsnight website.

 

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