OPEC AND THE ECONOMIC CONQUEST OF IRAQ

Why Iraq Still sells its oil à la cartel

Twilight of the neocon gods

According to insiders and to documents obtained from the State Department, the neocons, once in command, are now in full retreat. Iraq's system of oil production, after a year of failed free-market experimentation, is being re-created almost entirely on the lines originally laid out by Saddam Hussein.

Under the quiet direction of U.S. oil company executives working with the State Department, the Iraqis have discarded the neocon vision of a laissez faire, privatized oil operation in favor of one shackled to quotas set by OPEC, which have been key to the 148% rise in oil prices since the beginning of 2002. This rise is estimated to have cost the U.S. economy 1.5% of its GDP, or a third of its total growth during the period.

In plotting the destruction of OPEC, the neocons failed to predict the virulent resistance of insurgent forces: the U.S. oil industry itself. From the outset of the planning for war, U.S. oil executives had thrown in their lot with the pragmatists at the State Department and the National Security Council.   ... [snip]

With pipelines exploding daily, the fantasy of remaking Iraq's oil industry also went up in flames.   ... [snip]

For months, the State Department officially denied the existence of this 323-page plan for Iraq's oil, but when I identified the document's title from my sources and threatened legal action, I was able to obtain the complete report, dated December 2003 and entitled "Options for Developing a Long Term Sustainable Iraqi Oil Industry." The multi-volume document describes seven possible models of oil production for Iraq, each one merely a different flavor of a single option: the creation of a state-owned oil company.   ... [snip]

[snip]...  the switch to an OPEC-friendly policy for Iraq was driven by Dick Cheney himself. "The person who is most influential in running American energy policy is the Vice President," who, says Morse, "thinks that security begins by . . . letting prices follow wherever they may."

And Dick Cheney, far from "putting the squeeze on OPEC," has taken his de facto seat there, assenting by silence to the oil monopoly's piratical price gouging. But hasn't OPEC's stratospheric crude prices choked the life out of America's auto industry and bankrupted half a dozen airlines? In the Vice-President's bunker the elimination of jobs of Democratic-leaning union members is likely seen as a bonus for the good deed of boosting oil industry profits far above the ozone layer.

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