BP blackmail

pure and simple...

BP Says Limits on Drilling Imperil Spill Payouts

BP is warning Congress that if lawmakers pass legislation
that bars the company from getting new offshore drilling
permits, it may not have the money to pay for all the damages
caused by its oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

The company says a ban would also imperil the ambitious Gulf
Coast restoration efforts that officials want the company to
voluntarily support.

their gall knows no bounds...

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Joe Bageant's back, alive and well on "Planet Norte" (Winchester, Virginia)

i was starting to get a little concerned... his last post was on 11 may... however, as of today, he's back in the u.s. and dealing with all the troubling dynamics that implies...

The uniformity on Planet Norte is striking. Each person is a unit, installed in life support boxes in the suburbs and cities; all are fed, clothed by the same closed-loop corporate industrial system. Everywhere you look, inhabitants are plugged in at the brainstem to screens downloading their state approved daily consciousness updates. iPods, Blackberries, notebook computers, monitors in cubicles, and the ubiquitous TV screens in lobbies, bars, waiting rooms, even in taxicabs, mentally knead the public brain and condition its reactions to non-Americaness. Which may be defined as anything that does not come from of Washington, DC, Microsoft or Wal-Mart.

For such a big country, the "American experience" is extremely narrow and provincial, leaving its people with approximately the same comprehension of the outside world as an oyster bed. Yet there is that relentless busyness of Nortenians. That sort of constant movement that indicates all parties are busy-busy-busy, but offers no clue as to just what they are busy at.

We can be sure however, that it has to do with consuming. Everything in America has to do with consuming. So much so that we find not the slightest embarrassment in calling ourselves "the consumer society." Which is probably just as well, since calling ourselves something such as "the just society" might have been aiming a bit too high? Especially for a nation that never did find enough popular support to pass any of the 200 anti-lynching bills brought before its Congress (even Franklin Roosevelt refused to back them).

On the other hand, there is no disputing that we do reduce all things to consumption. Or acquiring money for consumption. Or paying on the debt for past consumption. It keeps things simple, and stamps them as authentically American.

For example, now faced with what may be the biggest ecological disaster in human history, I'm hearing average Americans up here talk of the Gulf oil "spill" (when they speak of it at all -- TV gives the illusion those outside the Gulf region give a shit), in terms of its effect on: (A) the price of seafood; and (B) jobs in tourism and fishing. Only trolls stunted by generations of inbred American style capitalism could do such a thing: reduce a massive ocean dead zone to the cost of a shrimp cocktail or a car payment.

Meanwhile, even as capitalism shows every sign of collapsing upon them under the weight of its sheer non-sustainability, Norteamericanos wait like patient, not-too-bright children for its "recovery." Recovery, of course, is that time when they can once again run through the malls and outlet stores, the car lots and the fried chicken palaces eating, grabbing and consuming. No doubt, something resembling a recovery will be staged for their benefit, thereby goosing their pocketbooks at least one more time before the rest of the world forecloses on the country.

sigh...

i totally relate to joe's return to the united states of north america... every time i return from extended periods out of the country, the "american experience" smacks me upside the head once again... it's very much the same as joe describes and it usually takes me at least 1-2 weeks to decompress/re-compress...

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Naomi Klein: BP cannot plug the hole in the earth that it made

a very sobering reflection on what surely must be the most horrific environmental disaster in history...

If Katrina pulled back the curtain on the reality of racism in America, the BP disaster pulls back the curtain on something far more hidden: how little control even the most ingenious among us have over the awesome, intricately interconnected natural forces with which we so casually meddle. BP cannot plug the hole in the Earth that it made. Obama cannot order fish species to survive, or brown pelicans not to go extinct (no matter whose ass he kicks). No amount of money – not BP's recently pledged $20bn (£13.5bn), not $100bn – can replace a culture that has lost its roots. And while our politicians and corporate leaders have yet to come to terms with these humbling truths, the people whose air, water and livelihoods have been contaminated are losing their illusions fast.

"Everything is dying," a woman said as the town hall meeting was finally coming to a close. "How can you honestly tell us that our Gulf is resilient and will bounce back? Because not one of you up here has a hint as to what is going to happen to our Gulf. You sit up here with a straight face and act like you know when you don't know."

This Gulf coast crisis is about many things – corruption, deregulation, the addiction to fossil fuels. But underneath it all, it's about this: our culture's excruciatingly dangerous claim to have such complete understanding and command over nature that we can radically manipulate and re-engineer it with minimal risk to the natural systems that sustain us. But as the BP disaster has revealed, nature is always more unpredictable than the most sophisticated mathematical and geological models imagine. During Thursday's congressional testimony, Hayward said: "The best minds and the deepest expertise are being brought to bear" on the crisis, and that, "with the possible exception of the space programme in the 1960s, it is difficult to imagine the gathering of a larger, more technically proficient team in one place in peacetime." And yet, in the face of what the geologist Jill Schneiderman has described as "Pandora's well", they are like the men at the front of that gymnasium: they act like they know, but they don't know.

and al jazeera also offers a good overview...

In the two months since the Deepwater Horizon explosion, millions of litres of oil have gushed out of BP's well into the water each day, slowly encroaching on the coastline. Fault Lines' Avi Lewis travels to the drill zone, and learns about the erosion in the wetlands from industry canals and pipelines, the health problems blamed on contaminated air and water from petrochemical refineries.

i can't express my sadness...

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The BP defense vs. the huge and still-evolving massive scope of the disaster

posting in justmeans, a site that focuses on corporate social responsibility, madeline ravich, a justmeans staff writer who has an interest in corporate social responsibility rating and ranking systems, offers her takeaway from the following graphic below...


(click on graphic for larger version)

The graphic touches on environmental risks, economic costs, impacts on local industries, the financial costs of cleanup, and expected government spending. Fine print at the bottom cites the references used for the graphic as including the U.S. Coast Guard, NOAA, The Gulf of Mexico Alliance, BP, Washington Post, American Bird Conservancy, Louisiana Department of Natural Resources, National Marine Fisheries Service, EPA, CNN, CBS, Reuters, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, and regional newspapers. Below is a summary of what I learned about impacts:

Wildlife: Animals are dying. The Gulf Coast contains 5 million acres of habitat, and is home to 45,000 bottlenose dolphins and 34,000 birds. 75%of the waterfowl that traverse the U.S. migrate through the Gulf, as do 5 sea turtle species.

Food Prices: The spill will make seafood less available and/or more expensive. As a result of the spill, you can expect to pay more for shrimp and oysters until the Gulf recovers. As of 2008, the Gulf was home to 73% of all U.S. shrimp fishing and 59% of all U.S. oyster fishing. The initial cost estimate to the fishing industry was $2.5 billion.

Tourism: The spill is threatening livelihoods. At risk are the $9 million dollars in wages paid each year to tourism and recreation workers in the Gulf region, 620,000 jobs in the Gulf region provided by tourism and recreation, and 7,700 jobs generated in Louisiana by saltwater sport fishing.

Companies: The companies responsible for the spill will foot some or all of the $300+ billion estimated cost of the spill in a worst-case scenario. The license where the well was drilled is owned 65% by BP, 25% by Anadarka, and 10% by Mitsui & Co. and responsibility will be shared in those proportions. Less clear is the responsibility to be borne by operators and contractors Transocean, Cameron, and Halliburton. These companies have lost $20 billion in market value due to the spill and BP is already spending $6 million per day.

Americans: Today, 46% of Americans favor offshore drilling (down from 64% in July of 2008) and 41% think the risks are too great (up from 28% in July of 2008). Those who still favor it may be part of the 51% who view the spill as an isolated incident and those who don't may include the 14% who know little to nothing about the Gulf.

Oil supply: The spill has underscored how detrimental a spill in the Gulf region is to the U.S. oil supply. 52% of U.S. total crude oil comes from the Gulf region, and in a worst-case scenario, 6.8 million gallons could begin gushing out of the well each day (the U.S. consumes 819 million gallons of crude oil each day.)

and yet, here is what an individual from a corporate social responsibility rating and ranking organization has to say in defense of the high marks it awards bp...

Our rating system is broad and balanced. It is backward-looking--but incorporates enough data points to be a good estimate of recent reality. Much of our evaluation is comparative--a company is judged against the performance of others in its industry. We measure twelve subcategories of performance--plus more than a dozen special issues. So, a company that performs poorly in one area can redeem itself in the others.

If you look at BP, it has remarkably good scores for a major oil company. I've attached a screen shot of the data you'd see if you were a subscriber. You'll see several subcategory ratings above 70. It is pretty hard to get this good a score. We are tough enough that we don't hand out any "As" and very few "Bs!" The average score is in the mid 40s.

For instance, BP has excellent governance scores. Take a look at the attached report from Governance Metrics (the best source IMHO of governance info). BP has excellent scores for its handling of board and transparency issues--especially when you compare it to other oil industry companies. Regardless of how BP did with the oil spill disaster, it probably is a pretty well governed company, with a balanced and responsible board.

Similarly, if you look at our custom report from Asset4, you'll see that BP garnered 20 awards for its community service (one of the top numbers in our system). The organizations that granted their favor to BP were not all stupid, fooled, or swayed only by PR. They did real work to investigate and check on BP's performance. Of course, many may regret the honors they bestowed on BP and renounce them after the fact. We are certain to see a drop in BP's community scores, as we move forward.

Look at the other sources on our list. The Accountability list contains only 100 companies. It is hard to get on it. Universum says BP is great to black people. This is not what you'd expect from a bunch of red neck oil people! The Human Rights Council only has 100 companies on their list--and they check each carefully. BP joined BSR, UN Global Compact, and Carbon Disclosure Project. Joining these groups does not prove BP is good. But, it does say they care about transparency and communication--one valid component of social responsibility.

Someone using our system could knock BP for their involvement in military contracting or for their pollution problems. Some people will want to be anti any company that pumps oil or that does any kind of resource extraction. That is OK, because we are not saying there is a "right" overall number for BP or that they should always be a top company. However, looking at them broadly and fairly, they are not that bad--and they are certainly as good or better than most of the rest of the oil industry.

And based on that, he concluded: I don't think the mistakes they've made changed their intentions or erased the reality of the hundreds of positive programs and initiatives they put in place over the last twenty years.

(above courtesy of yves smith in naked capitalism...)

here's what robert reich has to say about bp and csr (corporate social responsibility)...

BP has been making public statements about its supposed corporate social responsibility for as many years as it’s behaved irresponsibly. It’s the poster child for PR masquerading as CSR.

[…]

Ad campaigns about corporate social responsibility are cheap. So are public scoldings by politicians about a corporation’s irresponsibility. Watch not what they say but what they do.

and bp, amazingly enough, still cannot seem to accept responsibility for its actions... even worse, the economist, that perennial ass-kisser of the super-rich elites, has the nerve to say this...

America’s justifiable fury with BP is degenerating into a broader attack on business.

[...]

Vilifying BP also gets in the way of identifying other culprits, one of which is the government. BP operates in one of the most regulated industries on earth with some of the most perverse rules, subsidies and incentives. Shoddy oversight clearly contributed to the spill, and an energy policy which reduced the demand for oil would do more to avert future environmental horrors than fierce retribution.

[...]

If [Mr. Obama] he sees any impropriety in politicians ordering executives about, upstaging the courts and threatening confiscation, he has not said so. The collapse in BP’s share price suggests that he has convinced the markets that he is an American version of Vladimir Putin, willing to harry firms into doing his bidding.

the following from the columbia journalism review is contained in a daily kos diary (which, btw, excerpts the full yves smith post referenced above)... i don't think any summary of the still-unfolding disaster could do a better job than this does...

So, it's in one of the most regulated industries, but at the same time, regulators are responsible for its actions because they didn't regulate? Huh?

[...]

You have a few drinks and are driving home at about 100 mph, when it starts to rain. You lose control, crash, taking out a bunch of other drivers and starting a fire which burns down a lot of the surrounding neighborhood. Your defense -- there were laws in place that should have prevented the accident. The fault lies with the cops who failed to stop you before the unfortunate accident which was triggered by an act of God (the rain).

kinda says it all, doesn't it...?

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Fiddling while Rome burns

i don't know what these guys understand "leadership" to mean but one of the cardinal principles is that appearances are everything... i don't think anybody would begrudge mr. hayward some downtime to recuperate from the incredible pressure he's been under but the bastard also needs to understand that the entire world is watching his every move... the last thing he needs is to have an article highlighting his tony, elite, leisure pursuits with his very well-heeled fellow elites while an entire ecosystem and the livelihood of hundreds of thousands of people are being destroyed thanks to his company's greedy heedlessness... otoh, i doubt if he really gives a shit... just let those "small people" eat cake...

BP chief executive Tony Hayward, often criticized for being tone-deaf to U.S. concerns about the worst oil spill in American history, took time off Saturday to attend a glitzy yacht race off England's Isle of Wight.

Spokeswoman Sheila Williams said Hayward took a break from overseeing BP efforts to stem the undersea gusher in Gulf of Mexico to watch his boat "Bob" participate in the J.P. Morgan Asset Management Round the Island Race.

The one-day yacht race is one of the world's largest, attracting hundreds of boats and thousands of sailors.

In a statement, BP described Hayward's day off as "a rare moment of private time" and said that "no matter where he is, he is always in touch with what is happening within BP" and can direct recovery operations if required.

That is likely to be a hard sell in Gulf states struggling to deal with the up to 120 million gallons of oil that have escaped from a blown-out undersea well.

what this says to me is just how incredibly far-removed from ordinary people's reality guys like tony hayward really are... to tony hayward, "getting his life back" means he can continue his extraordinarily privileged lifestyle unfettered by the concerns of the peasantry... it also tells me that he was removed from the front lines of the crisis because he's a walking public relations disaster... evidently, the strategy isn't working so well...

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BP in the Gulf - are we facing a disaster of Biblical proportions...?

it ain't sounding good...

from a commenter on the website the oil drum...

What eventually will happen is that the blow out preventer will literally tip over if they do not run supports to it as the currents push on it. I suspect they will run those supports as cables tied to anchors very soon, if they don't, they are inviting disaster that much sooner.

Eventually even that will be futile as the well casings cannot support the weight of the massive system above with out the cement bond to the earth and that bond is being eroded away. When enough is eroded away the casings will buckle and the BOP [blow out preventer] will collapse the well. If and when you begin to see oil and gas coming up around the well area from under the BOP? or the area around the well head connection and casing sinking more and more rapidly? ...it won't be too long after that the entire system fails. BP must be aware of this, they are mapping the sea floor sonically and that is not a mere exercise. Our Gov't must be well aware too, they just are not telling us.

All of these things lead to only one place, a fully wide open well bore directly to the oil deposit...after that, it goes into the realm of "the worst things you can think of" The well may come completely apart as the inner liners fail. There is still a very long drill string in the well, that could literally come flying out...as I said...all the worst things you can think of are a possibility, but the very least damaging outcome as bad as it is, is that we are stuck with a wide open gusher blowing out 150,000 barrels a day of raw oil or more. There isn't any "cap dome" or any other suck fixer device on earth that exists or could be built that will stop it from gushing out and doing more and more damage to the gulf. While at the same time also doing more damage to the well, making the chance of halting it with a kill from the bottom up less and less likely to work, which as it stands now?....is the only real chance we have left to stop it all.

It's a race now...a race to drill the relief wells and take our last chance at killing this monster before the whole weakened, wore out, blown out, leaking and failing system gives up it's last gasp in a horrific crescendo.

this nightmare scenario is hinted at in this clip from keith olbermann's countdown program on msnbc...

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

maybe this time we've actually gone and screwed the pooch...

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Do you believe in coincidence...? I don't...

i tended to shrug this goldman story off, not because it didn't trip my bullshit detector, mind you...

The brokerage firm that's faced the most scrutiny from regulators in the past year over the shorting of mortgage related securities seems to have had good timing when it came to something else: the stock of British oil giant BP.

According to regulatory filings, RawStory.com has found that Goldman Sachs sold 4,680,822 shares of BP in the first quarter of 2010. Goldman's sales were the largest of any firm during that time. Goldman would have pocketed slightly more than $266 million if their holdings were sold at the average price of BP's stock during the quarter.

If Goldman had sold these shares today, their investment would have lost 36 percent its value, or $96 million. The share sales represented 44 percent of Goldman's holdings -- meaning that Goldman's remaining holdings have still lost tens of millions in value.

now i read this and i can't shrug it off any more...

Tony Hayward cashed in about a third of his holding in the company one month before a well on the Deepwater Horizon rig burst, causing an environmental disaster.

Mr Hayward, whose pay package is £4 million a year, then paid off the mortgage on his family’s mansion in Kent, which is estimated to be valued at more than £1.2 million.

had prior knowledge that the company was to face the biggest setback in its history.

His decision, however, means he avoided losing more than £423,000 when BP’s share price plunged after the oil spill began six weeks ago.

Since he disposed of 223,288 shares on March 17, the company’s share price has fallen by 30 per cent. About £40 billion has been wiped off its total value. The fall has caused pain not just for BP shareholders, but also for millions of company pension funds and small investors who have money held in tracker funds.

coincidence...? huh-uh... ain't buyin' it...

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The BP "spillcam"

something to ruin your day...

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The Obama administration is concerned about continuing to work with the perpetrator of the biggest environmental clusterfuck in history?

the most pathetic headline imaginable...

from the wapo...

Obama administration conflicted about relying on BP to stop gulf oil spill

jeebus h. freakin' keee-rist on a surfboard...! can you believe it...? if obama had any semblance of cojones and/or really had the common good of the citizens of this country at heart, he would have kicked bp's ass out of the picture after the first week, commandeered all available resources, and put together a crack team of the world's top experts to mount an all-out effort to mitigate this unprecedented disaster... he would have followed up by declaring a moratorium on any new offshore drilling permits and announced a national effort to develop alternative, clean energy resources in a program that would rival and even surpass the race to put a man on the moon...

what's the matter with this man...? nothing less than the survival of the environment of the gulf coast is at stake, to say nothing of the future of the planet, and barack is afraid of hurting widdle ol' bp's feelings...? grow a pair, mr. audacity of hope... you're working for US, you son-of-a-bitch...!

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"The latest face that masks the corporate state" - Chris Hedges on Obama

oh, would that it were otherwise...

What is happening in Greece, what will happen in Spain and Portugal, what is starting to happen here in states such as California, is the work of a global, white-collar criminal class. No government, including our own, will defy them. It is up to us. Barack Obama is simply the latest face that masks the corporate state. His administration serves corporate interests, not ours. Obama, like Goldman Sachs or Citibank, does not want the public to see how the Federal Reserve Bank acts as a private account and ATM machine for Wall Street at our expense. He, too, has helped orchestrate the largest transference of wealth upward in American history. He serves our imperial wars, refuses to restore civil liberties, and has not tamed our crippling deficits. His administration gutted regulatory agencies that permitted BP to turn the Gulf of Mexico into a toxic swamp. The refusal of Obama to intervene in a meaningful way to save the gulf’s ecosystem and curtail the abuses of the natural gas and oil corporations is not an accident. He knows where power lies. BP and its employees handed more than $3.5 million to federal candidates over the past 20 years, with the largest chunk of their money going to Obama, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

We are facing the collapse of the world’s financial system. It is the end of globalization. And in these final moments the rich are trying to get all they can while there is still time. The fusion of corporatism, militarism and internal and external intelligence agencies—much of their work done by private contractors—has given these corporations terrifying mechanisms of control. Think of it, as the Greeks do, as a species of foreign occupation. Think of the Greek riots as a struggle for liberation.

[...]

As the crowds of strikers in Athens understand, it is not the banks that are important but the people who raise children, build communities and sustain life. And when a government forgets whom it serves and why it exists, it must be replaced.

in some ways, i wish chris hedges wasn't so damn rational and articulate... as much time as i spend in search of the big picture, when someone lays it on me as clearly as hedges does, it can be more than a little depressing...

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The U.S. effort to control Iraqi oil continues a 100-year campaign of Western interference

juan cole...

Poor Iraq has been looted, occupied, and disrupted by the industrialized West for a century because of the curse of its oil wealth.

professor cole also offers this fascinating little tidbit...

Bush and Cheney clearly went into Iraq primarily in order to put US petroleum firms in precisely this favored position, although that is not the same thing as saying that the oil majors plumped for the war. It is more likely that smaller, hungrier concerns were eager for Iraq to be opened; Cheney was CEO of one of those firms 1995-2000, i.e. Halliburton, which might well have gone bankrupt without the no-bid contracts he was able to throw it once he arranged for the US invasion.

patrick cockburn in the independent...

Nearly four decades after the four biggest Western oil companies were expelled from Iraq by Saddam Hussein, they are negotiating their return. By the end of the month, Royal Dutch Shell, BP, Exxon Mobil and Total will sign agreements with the Baghdad government, Iraq's first with big Western oil firms since the US-led invasion in 2003.

[...]

The major oil companies have been eager to go back to Iraq, but are concerned about their own security and the long-term stability of the country. The two-year no-bid agreements are service agreements that should add another 500,000 barrels of crude a day of output to Iraq's present production of 2.5 million barrels a day (b/d).

The companies have the option of being paid in cash or crude oil for the deals, each of which will reportedly be worth $500m (£250m). For Iraq, the agreements are a way of accessing foreign expertise immediately, before the Iraqi parliament passes a controversial new hydrocarbons law.

[...]

For the four oil giants, the new agreements will bring them back to a country where they have a long history. BP, Exxon Mobil, Total and Shell were co-owners of a British, American and French consortium that kept Iraq's oil reserves in foreign control for more than 40 years.

The Iraq Petroleum Company (once the Turkish Petroleum Company) was formed in 1912 by oil companies eager to grab the resources in parts of the Ottoman Empire.

over five years after the u.s. began the illegal iraq war and well over a year after the attempt to pass the iraq oil law ground to a standstill (see my previous posts here), my country soldiers on in its quest to control iraqi oil...

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The 'fair" Iraq oil law - why the hell can't we get the TRUTH out of our media?

check this from today's nyt...

Iraqi Blocs Opposed to Draft Oil Bill

Kurdish and Sunni Arab officials are concerned over a draft
of a bill establishing a framework for the fair
distribution of oil revenues.

[...]

The draft law, which establishes a framework for the distribution of oil revenues, was approved by the Iraqi cabinet in late February after months of negotiations. The White House was hoping for quick passage to lay the groundwork for a political settlement among the country’s ethnic and sectarian factions.

[...]

The draft oil law would allow regions to enter into production-sharing agreements with foreign companies, which some Iraqis and critics of the Bush administration say could lead to foreigners reaping too much of the country’s oil wealth.

Iraqi officials say all contracts will be subjected to a fair bidding process, but there are fears that American companies could be favored.

here's the REAL STORY about iraq's oil law, contained in a post i made back in january... read it carefully and then decide if "fair distribution of oil revenues" comes within a country mile of being the truth...

it's a heckuva deal when you have the entire might of the taxpayer-supported united states goverment ready and willing to sacrifice people's lives in order to increase your opportunities for expanding business and increasing profits... you don't have to beat down or buy out the competition, you don't have to go through the tediousness of exploration and test drilling, you don't have a huge investment in new infrastructure, the economy is already in ruins so labor costs are laughably low... what's NOT to like...?

"Iraq's massive oil reserves, the third-largest in the world, are about to be thrown open for large-scale exploitation by Western oil companies under a controversial law which is expected to come before the Iraqi parliament within days," Danny Fortson, Andrew Murray-Watson and Tim Webb report in the cover story [Britain's The Independent on Sunday].

According to the paper, the law "would give big oil companies such as BP, Shell and Exxon 30-year contracts to extract Iraqi crude and allow the first large-scale operation of foreign oil interests in the country since the industry was nationalised in 1972."

"Supporters say the provision allowing oil companies to take up to 75 per cent of the profits will last until they have recouped initial drilling costs," the article continues. "After that, they would collect about 20 per cent of all profits, according to industry sources in Iraq. But that is twice the industry average for such deals."

reading things like this, i just get this incredible feeling of pride in my country... is the u.s. a great place, or what...?

then i posted this back in february...

more on iraq's oil law, the reason we went into iraq in the first place... of course, like everything else these days, it comes with the customary dose of cognitive dissonance...

inter press service news agency...

[The new oil law] specifies that up to two-thirds of Iraq's known reserves would be developed by multinationals, under contracts lasting for 15 to 20 years.

This policy would represent a u-turn for Iraq's oil industry, which has been in the public sector for more than three decades, and would break from normal practice in the Middle East.

According to local labour leaders, transferring ownership to the foreign companies would give a further pretext to continue the U.S. occupation on the grounds that those companies will need protection.

[...]

On Feb. 8, the labour unions sent a letter in Arabic to Iraqi President Jalal Talbani urging him to reconsider this kind of agreement.

"Production-sharing agreements are a relic of the 1960s," said the letter, seen by IPS. "They will re-imprison the Iraqi economy and impinge on Iraq's sovereignty since they only preserve the interests of foreign companies. We warn against falling into this trap."

[...]

The first draft was seen only by the committee of the Iraqi technocrat who penned it, nine international oil companies, the British and the U.S. governments and the International Monetary Fund. The Iraqi parliament will get its first glimpse next week.

[...]

There's no other country in the Middle East with the kind of oil reserves that Iraq has that would consider signing a production-sharing agreement," [Ewa Jasiewicz, a researcher at PLATFORM, a British human rights and environmental group that monitors the oil industry] said. "It's a form of privatisation and that's why those countries haven't signed these because it's not in their interests."

GOD-ROTTEN-DAMMIT... I'M SICK AND TIRED OF GETTING ONLY A TINY PART OF THE STORY... WHERE'S THE CONTEXT...? WHERE'S THE TRUTH...?

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