By Ewa Jasiewicz, PLATFORM 23 April 2007 at www.niqash.org
niqash is produced by an Arab-German-Kurdish team in Berlin and Amman. It is published in English, Arabic, and Kurdish. The project is funded by the German Foreign Ministry and supported by the Friedrich-Ebert-Foundation.
A Hydrocarbon Law which advocates a radical restructuring of Iraq's oil industry was approved by the Iraqi cabinet in February. If passed by parliament, the law will mark a milestone in Iraqi history – a shift of Iraq's massive reserves from public to private hands. It could see private companies develop and profit from Iraq's oil for 15-30 year periods with virtually no possibility for the Iraqi state to renegotiate contractual terms and conditions.
The first draft of the oil law was produced to a timeline set by the International Monetary Fund. The IMF ordered, as a condition of debt relief, the issuance of an oil law by December 2006. This law had to open up Iraq oil (for the first time in over 30 years) to long-term investment by foreign oil companies. Finally produced in July 2006, the first to review it and comment on it were 9 multinational oil companies, the British government and US government. It would be eight months before the vast majority of the Iraqi parliament would even see it. Read complete article
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