Where are the U.S. oil companies? The unknown of Iraq’s oil contracts

As Iraq’s Oil Min­istry adviser Thamir Ghad­hban noticed the absence of the Amer­i­can Oil com­pa­nies from Iraq’s oil auc­tion, and Russ­ian RT sur­prised that U.S. com­pa­nies did not show great inter­est — con­trary to the  expec­ta­tions — in the sec­ond round of Iraq’s oil auc­tion, although it was their “right” to earn the lion’s share (table of coun­tries won the auction)

The Russ­ian TV sta­tion says that it is dif­fi­cult to under­stand such Amer­i­can behavior.

The unknown dimen­sions of Iraq’s Oil contracts:

- The pro­duc­tion of Iraq’s oil will exceed the 10 mil­lion b/d [vir­tu­ally, see below].

- Win­ning foothold and inter­ests in Iraq. The Russ­ian, Chi­nese, Malaysian, and Japan­ese Oil com­pa­nies will shift posi­tion in the Secu­rity Coun­cil (espe­cially Rus­sia and China) towards accept­ing the part­ner­ship with the U.S., France and Britain, as long as the oil inter­ests can gather the five SC members.

In other words, oil inter­ests of the five per­ma­nent mem­bers of the UN Secu­rity Coun­cil are bal­anced, this bal­ance will effects the UN future res­o­lu­tions within the Secu­rity Council.

- Iraq will become among the three largest oil-producing coun­tries in the world, next to Rus­sia and Saudi Ara­bia. Wash­ing­ton will be able to use “Bagh­dad” within the oil-producing coun­tries, “OPEC”, allow­ing the U.S. to impose its influ­ence on the inter­na­tional oil inter­ests bal­ance through Iraq’s mem­ber­ship in the organization.

- Reports posted here before of the West­ern Europe’s attempts to con­nect Iraq’s oil pipelines to South-Russia “Nabucco line” project through the NATO, who no coin­ci­den­tally opened its Head­quar­ter in the “Green Zone”.

- With the expected 10 mil­lion b/d, will “OPEC” accepts Iraq’s mem­ber­ship in the orga­ni­za­tion? Or Iraq will leave the orga­ni­za­tion and increases its oil exports, as an inde­pen­dent, which is very likely will cause the col­lapse of oil prices in the world? Sec­ond sce­nario will trans­form Iraq into a sec­ond “Saudi Ara­bia”, its role is designed by the U.S. and West­ern Europe to be an “Oil-pump” to serve the inter­na­tional oil mar­ket and enrich the elite tech­nocrats who help these countries.

Mis­cal­cu­lated steps:

- The out­put at Rumaila, Qurna and Zubair will require 6mn-8mn b/d of water to be injected, and more will be needed for the south­ern fields. Falling water lev­els in Iraq’s Tigris and Euphrates rivers because of drought and Turk­ish dams mean that oil field oper­a­tors will have to rely on sea water from the Mideast Gulf for water injec­tion. No study made yet on a new water injec­tion systems.

- For­eign firms face finan­cial penal­ties if they do not hit out­put tar­gets within six years. With the exis­tence vio­lence, this tar­get is doubtful.

- Iraq’s south­ern Basra ter­mi­nal can load up to 1.6mn b/d, which far lower than the for­eign oil com­pa­nies expectations.

- Few MPs includ­ing the Oil and Gas Com­mis­sion in par­lia­ment Jaber Khal­ifa Jaber the sec­ond round auc­tion is just the first round, lacked the required legal and con­sti­tu­tional cov­ers. One MP Shadha Al-Mousawi already put the vio­la­tion before the Fed­eral Court, the sec­ond hear­ing will at the 22nd of this month.