Jennifer Johnson of WSMV just sold this deal as "cheap gas for Tennesseans--eventually!"
Just shoot me now.
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No one could have anticipated this:
Deals With Iraq Are Set to Bring Oil Giants Back
BAGHDAD — Four Western oil companies are in the final stages of negotiations this month on contracts that will return them to Iraq, 36 years after losing their oil concession to nationalization as Saddam Hussein rose to power.
I bet you didn’t know that Saddam Hussein threw Western oil companies out of Iraq 36 years ago, did you? I didn’t either. Funny how these things never really came up in the run-up to war. But I digress.
Exxon Mobil, Shell, Total and BP — the original partners in the Iraq Petroleum Company — along with Chevron and a number of smaller oil companies, are in talks with Iraq’s Oil Ministry for no-bid contracts to service Iraq’s largest fields, according to ministry officials, oil company officials and an American diplomat.
The deals, expected to be announced on June 30, will lay the foundation for the first commercial work for the major companies in Iraq since the American invasion, and open a new and potentially lucrative country for their operations.
The no-bid contracts are unusual for the industry, and the offers prevailed over others by more than 40 companies, including companies in Russia, China and India. The contracts, which would run for one to two years and are relatively small by industry standards, would nonetheless give the companies an advantage in bidding on future contracts in a country that many experts consider to be the best hope for a large-scale increase in oil production.
Isn’t that special! The four largest Western oil companies are preparing to sign no-bid contracts in Iraq, bringing them back to a position they had 36 years ago. Is that some long-range planning or what!
This is an interesting turn of events, since the last time an American oil company was signing deals in Iraq, the Bush-connected Hunt Oil of Dallas, the Bush Administration was none too happy that the news had leaked out, since it would undermine the Iraqi government’s attempts to write an oil revenue sharing law. President Bush himself claimed to “know nothing about the deal,” but hey, he always claims to know nothing about everything so that’s no surprise.
This deal certainly looks bad, since critics of the American invasion have said all along that the occupation of Iraq is and always has been about the oil. Well, duh.
For their part, the oil companies claim they are “helping Iraq rebuild its decrepit oil industry.” It’s a humanitarian gesture! They get nothing out of it, nothing at all!
Er, except this:
The first oil contracts for the majors in Iraq are exceptional for the oil industry.
They include a provision that could allow the companies to reap large profits at today’s prices: the ministry and companies are negotiating payment in oil rather than cash.
Mission accomplished! Heckuva job, Bushie!
Look, if invading and occupying Iraq to secure their oil reserves for Western oil companies is part of our energy security policy, then why didn’t they just tell us that? Why not be honest about it? Why tell us our soldiers are dying for some big cause like spreading Democracy across the Middle East, or fighting terorrism? That’s obviously bullshit.
And I have to wonder if this timely announcement, coming as Americans are feeling the tightest gasoline pinch in decades, wasn’t somehow intentional. Americans are more likely to support invading a foreign country to secure their oil when gas is at $4.50 a gallon than at $1.50 a gallon.
Anyway, this proves that we DFH's on the left were right all along: we're in Iraq for oil, and you wingnuts who bought the administration line about mushroom clouds and mobile weapons labs were all a bunch of chumps. You do not deserve to be listened to about anything ever again. Yes, I am talking to you, William Kristol, and you Fred Hiatt, and all of the Little Green Snotballs and Johnny Assrocket and all the rest of you Kool-Aid drinkers. You were fed lies by the Administration, hey we all were, but you were the idiots who believed them.
And God help us if you and your cohorts in the GOP are ever allowed near the reins of power again.
