Friday, April 06, 2007
Oh, That Halliburton!
Black Gold! Texas Tea! Jed Clampett Commodity!
So it certainly seems right that the first oil contracts out of Iraq would go to Halliburton, right? Well, as the great Glenn Beck says, "Not so much."
According to CNN, the Bible for the Insane Liberal Clown Posse and War For Oil Crowd (bolding mine):
Despite claims by some critics that the Bush administration invaded Iraq to take control of its oil, the first contracts with major oil firms from Iraq's new government are likely to go not to U.S. companies, but rather to companies from China, India, Vietnam, and Indonesia.
While Iraqi lawmakers struggle to pass an agreement on exactly who will award the contracts and how the revenue will be shared, experts say a draft version that passed the cabinet earlier this year will likely uphold agreements previously signed by those countries under Saddam Hussein's government.
[...]
The Asian firms are at an advantage for several reasons.
First, less constrained by Western sanctions during the Hussein regime, they've been operating in Iraq and know the country's oilfields, said Falah Aljibury, an energy analyst who has advised several Iraqi oil ministers as well as other OPEC nations.
Aljibury said the first contracts likely awarded will be to the Chinese in the south central part of Iraq, the Vietnamese in the south, the Indians along the Kuwaiti border, and the Indonesians in the western desert.
[The] Asian firms are also well positioned to grab further contracts.
Having avoided military entanglements in the region, they may curry more favor with the Iraqi people.
"They have no involvement with the secular or ethnic people," said Aljibury. "The conditions favor them."
Given its rapidly growing thirst for oil, combined with its feeling of isolation from world oil markets, China is sometimes viewed as more cavalier than Western oil firms when it comes to putting capital and people at risk. That could lead them to sign contracts in violent Iraq sooner than Western firms.
©2007
: 3:49 PM, April 06, 2007 
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