Ewa Jasiewicz | ukwatch.net

Hands off our oil

Ellie Keen — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 23:12:27 +0000

Unions lead fight against Western oil theft

Five years into the war and occupation of Iraq, and following five missed deadlines, the proposed Iraqi Oil Law remains off the statute books, despite the best efforts of those whom it would benefit. The law would allow foreign oil companies to control the extraction, production and depletion of Iraq’s oil reserves for a generation. Furthermore, it would allow sectarian élites, who already enjoy both military and political power, to sign their own contracts with oil companies, thus reinforcing their long-term economic control.

Dick Cheney, General Petraeus, Condoleeza Rice and the former supreme commander of US forces in the Middle East, Admiral Fallon, have all visited Baghdad in person to push for ratification of the law – yet their diplomatic efforts, flanked by over 150,000 US troops, have failed. Iraqi civil society and embattled parliamentarians are winning.

Inside Iraq, unions, still illegal and subject to Ba’athist anti-union legislation, are leading the fight against this resource theft. The Iraqi Federation of Oil Unions (IFOU) is on the frontline. The 26,000-member independent federation is active in 11 state oil and gas companies throughout the country and is the only union to have forced Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki to the negotiating table. The IFOU has held numerous protests, conferences and seminars about the Oil Law, popularizing the term ‘Production Sharing Agreements’ – the contractual agreement which has become a by-word for ‘oil theft’. Later drafts of the Oil Law had to drop the term due to ‘media and popular fuss’, according to the Ministry of Oil.

When Iraqi Pipeline Union workers took strike action last summer, Oil Minister Hussein Al Shahristani called the action ‘economic sabotage’ and arrest warrants were issued against the IFOU’s leadership. Iraqi troops occupied the oil fields as US helicopter gunships circled overhead. Despite death threats from both sectarian militias and Government allies, the union remains steadfast in the face of mounting repression. And they are not alone. Power, port, agriculture and steel sector unions have organized a co-ordinating committee in Basra, Iraq’s oil capital, to campaign for union rights and against public sector privatization. The Federation of Workers’ Councils and the General Federation of Iraqi Workers are both involved in the committee and in similar initiatives around the country. Likewise, representatives from all unions are involved in the Iraq Freedom Congress’s ‘Anti Oil Law Front’. Based mainly in Baghdad and connected to the Worker Communist Party of Iraq, it has held conferences and demonstrations in the capital against oil privatization.

Last year over 100 technocrats, including senior former Oil Ministry and Iraqi National Oil Company directors and lawyers, signed a statement urging the Iraqi Government not to support a law which allows for long-term contracts to be signed while the country is still occupied.

So far the law remains unpassable. Yet Oil Minister Shahristani is inviting oil companies to sign under existing Ba’athist legislation and to treat the Oil Law as passed, despite there being no democratic mandate for it or the economic occupation it represents.

The issue of resource sovereignty is uniting Iraqis. A powerful alliance of grassroots civil society organizations and technocrats has been created and it is intent on keeping Iraq’s oil in the hands of the people.

For further information see
www.basraoilunion.org
www.handsoffiraqioil.org

Stealing Iraq's Future

Tim Holmes — Thu, 19 Jul 2007 22:22:17 +0000

AS BRITAIN and the United States come under increasing pressure to withdraw from Iraq, the issue of who will control Iraq’s natural resources has been absent from the agenda. Yet the interests of the occupying powers and their oil company allies have been key in shaping the agenda of the war, occupation and long-term future of Iraq.

Oil accounts for 95 per cent of all Iraqi government revenue. Whoever controls Iraq’s oil will have substantial control over the country’s economy. International oil companies, the British and US governments and the Interational Monetary Fund have been pushing for a radical restructuring of the oil industry which would see foreign oil companies control Iraqi oil for the first time in more than 30 years. Iraqi MPs, religious authorities and trade unions are strongly opposed to this.

Washington wants Iraq’s leaders to pass a “hydrocarbon law”. A draft law has now been written to create a legal framework allowing foreign companies access to Iraq’s huge oil reserves. The oil companies and Iraq’s occupiers are promoting long-term exclusive contracts known as production sharing agreements (PSAs) . Under these, oil companies provide the investment to explore for oil and carry the risk should they not find any. The reward for investing is a fixed share of the profits of oil and control over the extraction and development of fields. In Iraq’s case, according to the draft law, they would last 30 years with virtually no opportunity for Iraq to renegotiate. PSAs are normally used in countries with small or difficult-to-access reserves. Iraq has some of the most easily accessible oil reserves. None of Iraq’s neighbours use PSAs. nor do the top six oil-producing countries in the world. In fact, only 12 per cent of global oil reserves are covered by PSAs.

The roots of the oil law lie in the Future of Iraq Project founded by the US State Department in 2002. This aimed to write a political and economic blueprint for Iraq after Saddam Hussein. The Oil and Gas Working Group, which met regularly in Washington and London, was comprised of oil industry specialists and Iraqi ex-pats – some of whom went on to serve in the oil ministry. The conclusions of this group were that Iraq needed to open its oil sector to foreign investment. Since then, increasing pressure has been placed on the Iraqis to complete and pass the law.

By the time Iraq was invaded, it was – per capita – the most indebted country in the world – in the red to the tune of more than £88 billion. Passage of the oil law was made a condition of debt relief by the IMF. Iraq agreed to pass legislation opening up its oil to foreign investment by the end of 2006.

Since July 2006, the first draft of the oil law has been seen by nine multinational oil companies, the British and US governments and the IMF, which influenced its development from then on. It would be eight months before Iraqi MPs would see it. Civil society organisations were excluded altogether.

However, there is widespread oppostion to the law – and in some unlikely places. One of the laws three Iraqi authors has come out strongly against it. At the Centre for Strategic and International Studies last month, Dr Tariq Shafiq, former executive director of the Iraqi National Oil Company said: “The policy of neo-conservative politicians prior to and post the invasion of Iraq has been the privatisation of Iraq’s oil industry, leaving future exploration and development in the hands of international oil companies on the basis of a PSA model. Privatisation, however, runs against the grain of the great majority of the oil technocrats and the Iraqi nation. “

The term “production sharing agreement” has been dropped from the final draft of the law. Hassan Jumaa Awad, president of the 26,000-strong Iraqi Federation of Oil Unions (IFOU) puts this down to its campaign against the contracts. “We succeeded in changing the language of the law. Now we intend to change the substance of it. This law is not in the interests of the Iraqi people. It is a form of theft. We as a union are not against foreign companies or foreign technology, but companies must invest in our country with respect for our national interests.”

Hassan is adamant the country has indigenous expertise it can use. “A lot of skilled engineers and managers have left the country – both as a result of the dictatorship and the occupation – but many skilled professionals have remained. We can reconstruct our industry and we can run it ourselves.”

The Iraqi government responded to the IFOU’s strike action by issuing arrest warrants against its leaders and sending troops into the oil fields. Despite the resumption of negotiations and withdrawal of troops, arrest warrants remain outstanding and can be reactivated at any time.

Britain and the US have repeatedly referred to the oil law as a measure for promoting reconciliation through the fair distribution of oil revenues. Yet the law they have pushed barely mentions revenue – just one of the 46 articles in the law refers to revenue sharing and this is only to say it is the subject of a separate law. When a separate law on revenue sharing was written some months later, Britain and the US showed little interest.

The oil law is not about reconciliation. It is about gaining access to the untapped market of Iraq’s oil revenues. The revenue-sharing law is more likely to promote sectarian conflict than relieve it, with Iraq’s religious and ethnic sects being described as pursuing separate agendas according to their region. This labelling creates conditions for the realisation of regions based on sects and sectarianism and could be regarded as a precursor to the dismembering of Iraq.

One of the most dangerous provisions of the oil law is the creation of the Federal Oil and Gas Council. This will have the last word on which contracts are signed and with which companies. Probably appointed by the Prime Minister and representing political factions in power in Iraq, it will have supreme decision-making power over how the economy is developed.

It could be argued this represents the ideal political conditions for multinational oil companies: a weak fragmented state with no territorial or political unity. Oil giants have operated in conflict zones such as Nigeria and Colombia in the past, where they have been accused of sponsoring local death squads and the violent elimination of trade unions and other resistance to their operations.

Documents uncovered through Freedom of Information requests have revealed that British Government officials advised and made representations on behalf of foreign oil companies in their quest to secure long-term contracts in Iraq. Foreign Office and Treasury officials advised the International Tax and Investment Centre on its strategy for influencing Iraq’s leaders. The ITIC is an oil industry lobbying organisation sponsored by six oil companies, including Shell and BP, to write a report advocating PSAs. The British Ambassador to Iraq sent ITIC’s lobbying document to the Iraqi finance minister. A British diplomat helped organise a meeting in Beirut in January 2005 at which oil companies put their case directly to ministers and officials of the Iraqi ministries of oil, finance and planning. The Foreign Office hired a former BP executive to lead its work on Iraqi oil policy in 2003 and 2004. He wrote a code of practice for the Iraqi oil ministry, which called for multinational oil companies to play the major role in developing the country’s oil.

However, there is no guarantee that those who planned and executed the invasion of Iraq will get what they came for: geopolitical power over the region, security for Israel and domination of the oil market by multinational companies.

This would necessitate the continued long-term devastation, division and humiliation of the people of Iraq. They have demonstrated they will not tolerate this. Supporting the Iraqi people in their quest for sovereignty over their resources and an end to the military and economic occupation is key to making sure there will be no oil for the blood shed in their country and no more blood for oil.

Ewa Jasiewicz is a writer, journalist, human rights activist and union organiser.

Delivering Iraq to the Corporations

Tue, 22 Feb 2005 10:46:19 +0000

Windrush began as an independent publishing global publishing house, producing corporate journals and websites for trade and financial institutions. Its glossy mouthpieces and e-digests promote the culture of commodification and privatisation. The conquering of new markets and the wars which smash them open are sanitised and normalised. In these journals the corporate elite theorise and advocate their socially and environmentally destructive agendas.

Windrush Communications Ltd was founded in December 2002 as an independent private company. Formerly known as Wishwell Ltd, it was renamed Windrush in February 2003. Its Docklands-dwelling Director is 48-year-old John Lumb while Raminder Singh-Barmi holds the post of Managing Director of Iraq Procurement. From publishing it graduated two years late to the esteemed position of being the organiser of the glittering and gargantuan Iraq Procurement Conferences. So far there have been three: London April 2004; Jordan November 2004 and Iraq Oil and Gas, Amman, August 2004. These events bring together politicians, ministers, and business people from the world over (Iraqs Electricity, Health, and Oil ministers plus British governmental representatives and Jordanian minsiters have all attended the events) to broker deals, talk shop, and re-configure the economy, markets and future of an entire nation in the image and interests of the rich and powerful, corporate and governmental. The legalityof these events has been called into . question by anti-war activists arguing that the sell-off of Iraqs assets under an Occupation-created law on Foreign Investment – Order 39 – violates the Geneva Convention and Hague Regulations and amounts to pillage.

Curiously there is more than one business venture involved in Windrush Communications work. A company named Omega Marketing Worldwide which appears to be new shares the address and telephone line of Windrush at Clergy House, Mark Street, EC2, and Windrushs former Production Manager, Ben Pilley, has been transferred and promoted to Managing Director of Omega Marketing Worldwide. The relationship between the two companies is unclear, as is the relationship between Windrush and the ‘Iraq Development Program’ again, undefined, except that all procurement conference registration fees must be paid to The Iraq Development Program. The IDP also enjoys exclusive hotel rates, a perk usually afforded to companies close to government.

Windrushs move into the field of international corporate politics came when it became the official Media Partner (read publicist/PR agent) for the British-Arab Chamber of Commerce. A large company with over 25 years service to the business, government and academic sectors, the BACC provides these sectors with information and analysis of how, where, when and what to privatise, control and justify next. The BACC has a board of over 80 Directors. Its Vice-Chairman is Sir Alan Munro, former British Ambassador to Algeria and Saudi Arabia, who has admitted having a salaried position advising companies on how to break into the Saudi Arabian market – however his position at the BACC is ‘voluntary’.

Windrush began their project of contract brokering and pillage promoting with three initial websites designed to identify markets for businesses ‘Rebuilding Iraq News’, ‘Iraqi Business Project’ and ‘Iraqs Key Industries’, before picking up the gauntlet from where The Iraq Program Management Office (PMO) left off. The PMO itself was set up by the US puppet Coalition Provisional Authority to oversee all contracts funded by the new US government’s appropriation of over $18.6 billion for Iraq’s reconstruction. Windrush joins an industry of post-conflict reconstruction corporate guides, such as 3C New York, which establishes contacts between procurement agencies in the U.S government and potential contractors in the U.S. and abroad with its Iraq Project.During Windrush’s Amman Procurement conference last July, the Iraqi-British Chamber of Commerce, later re-branded the Iraqi-British Business Council (IBBC) was founded by a group of businessmen. The IBBC has beenestablished with the function of entrenching the bilateral commercial relationship between Iraq and Britain, opening opportunities for Iraqi businessmen to participate in the process of rebuilding their country with the help of their British partners.

This indicates that not only have the Iraq Procurement events organised the competing companies in the free market race in Iraq into coherent bodies and groups, but they have also helped Iraqi elites to grab and hold the reins of reconstruction in Iraq. They are providing proponents of privatisation, old and new, with fresh spaces, platforms and alliances to carry out the next phase of free market capitalism deeper into the Middle East. This is in sync with George Bushs declaration of a Middle East Free Trade Zone within the next 10 years – a zone dependent on war, occupation and death for its survival. Windrush were unavailable to comment, stating that the company is not giving any media interviews at the moment.