Subject: BBC: Secret U.S. plans for Iraq's oil Date: Fri, 18 Mar 2005 05:01:58 -0600 Message-ID: <B14120EE5C432443B21102F7925DAD020142072C@COKE.uwec.edu> From: "Grossman, Zoltan C." <GROSSMZC@uwec.edu>
Secret U.S. plans for Iraq's oil
by Greg Palast
Reporting for BBC Newsnight
BROOKLYN, NY -- (OfficialWire) -- 03/17/05 -- 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."
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