Iraqis
Oppose Oil Privatization
By Aaron Glantz
09 August, 2007
OneWorld.net
SAN FRANCISCO -
A new public opinion poll has found nearly two thirds of Iraqis oppose
plans to open the country’s oilfields to foreign companies.
The poll found a majority
of every Iraqi ethnic and religious group believe their oil should remain
nationalized. Some 66 percent of Shi’ites and 62 percent of Sunnis
support government control of the oil sector, along with 52 percent
of Kurds.
Eric Leaver, of the Washington,
DC-based Institute for Policy Studies, a non-profit think tank that
helped pay for the poll, said it was the first time ordinary Iraqis
have been asked their views about an oil law geared towards privatizing
Iraq’s most lucrative natural resource.
The law has been debated
in Iraq’s parliament for more than a year.
“You have a question
that’s of vital importance to the future of the country,”
Leaver said. “Most of the Iraqi budget comes from the development
and sale of Iraqi oil and here we have arguably one of the largest questions
that’s going to be decided for the future of Iraq being done without
any citizens’ consultation or input.”
Only 4 percent of Iraqis
polled said they had been given “totally adequate” information
for them to feel informed about the oil law.
The U.S. government has been
pressuring the Iraqi government to pass the oil law by September. Anontia
Juhasz of the group Oil Change International told OneWorld that the
Bush administration and Congress have made the law’s passage one
of the “benchmarks” that would indicate the U.S. is making
progress in the war.
According to Oil Change International,
the oil law sets no minimum standard for the extent to which foreign
companies would have to invest their earnings in the Iraqi economy,
partner with Iraqi companies, hire Iraqi workers, or share new technologies.
It also would allow multinational
oil companies to sign exclusive 30-year contracts with Iraq’s
current government.
“We’re talking
about opening up the second largest oil reserves in the entire world
to foreign investment,” Juhasz said. “It costs about $75
a barrel — and about 60 cents to get it out of the ground. Do
the math.”
So far the Iraqi Parliament
has resisted the bill. After debating it for more than a year, the body
adjourned for a month-long vacation and so will not take up the issue
until at least September.
But officials in northern
Iraq passed their version of an oil law Tuesday, a move that the Kurdistan
Regional Government Prime Minister Nechirvan Barzani called a “historic
moment.”
The measure gives Kurdish
leaders the right to administer its oil wealth in the three northern
governates — Arbil, Sulaimaniyah and Dohuk — as well as
what it called “disputed territories,” including the ethnically
mixed, oil rich city of Kirkuk.
In June, the Kurdish regional
government said it was planning to offer 40 new oil blocks to foreign
companies.
“The Kurds are really
pushing this process of extreme federalism by entering into their own
oil agreements,” Leaver told OneWorld. “This is causing
a destabilizing effect on the rest of the country because now they feel
like they really need to move on getting a grip on what the oil laws
will be before they become de facto, because that’s the way the
Kurdish area has been operating.”
The poll was based on interviews
with 2,200 Iraqis conducted in June and July by KA Research and was
paid for by a coalition of non-profit groups in the United States and
Great Britain, including Oil Change International, the Institute for
Policy Studies, Global Policy Forum, PLATFORM, and Jubilee Iraq.
Copyright © 2007 OneWorld.net.
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