IN THE NEWS
Secret US plans for Iraq's oil
By
Greg Palast | Reporting for
Newsnight
The Bush administration made plans for war and for Iraq's
oil before the 9/11 attacks, sparking a policy battle
between neo-cons and Big Oil, BBC's Newsnight has revealed.
Iraqi-born Falah Aljibury says US Neo-Conservatives planned
to force a coup d'etat in Iraq
Two years ago today - when President George Bush announced
US, British and Allied forces would begin to bomb Baghdad -
protesters claimed the US had a secret plan for Iraq's oil
once Saddam had been conquered.
In fact there were two conflicting plans, setting off a
hidden policy war between neo-conservatives at the Pentagon,
on one side, versus a combination of "Big Oil" executives
and US State Department "pragmatists".
"Big Oil" appears to have won. The latest plan, obtained by
Newsnight from the US State Department was, we learned,
drafted with the help of American oil industry consultants.
Insiders told Newsnight that planning began "within weeks"
of Bush's first taking office in 2001, long before the
September 11th attack on the US.
"We saw an increase in the bombing of oil facilities and
pipelines [in Iraq] built on the premise that
privatisation is coming."
Mr. Falah Aljibury
An Iraqi-born oil industry consultant, Falah Aljibury, says
he took part in the secret meetings in California,
Washington and the Middle East. He described a State
Department plan for a forced coup d'etat.
Mr Aljibury himself told Newsnight that he interviewed
potential successors to Saddam Hussein on behalf of the Bush
administration.
Secret sell-off plan
The industry-favoured plan was pushed aside by a secret
plan, drafted just before the invasion in 2003, which called
for the sell-off of all of Iraq's oil fields. The new plan
was crafted by neo-conservatives intent on using Iraq's oil
to destroy the Opec cartel through massive increases in
production above Opec quotas.
Former Shell Oil USA chief stalled plans to privatise Iraq's
oil industry
The sell-off was given the green light in a secret meeting
in London headed by Fadhil Chalabi shortly after the US
entered Baghdad, according to Robert Ebel.
Mr Ebel, a former Energy and CIA oil analyst, now a fellow
at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in
Washington, told Newsnight he flew to the London meeting at
the request of the State Department.
Mr Aljibury, once Ronald Reagan's "back-channel" to Saddam,
claims that plans to sell off Iraq's oil, pushed by the
US-installed Governing Council in 2003, helped instigate the
insurgency and attacks on US and British occupying forces.
"Insurgents used this, saying, 'Look, you're losing your
country, you're losing your resources to a bunch of wealthy
billionaires who want to take you over and make your life
miserable,'" said Mr Aljibury from his home near San
Francisco.
"We saw an increase in the bombing of oil facilities,
pipelines, built on the premise that privatisation is
coming."
Privatisation blocked by industry
Philip Carroll, the former CEO of Shell Oil USA who took
control of Iraq's oil production for the US Government a
month after the invasion, stalled the sell-off scheme.
Mr Carroll told us he made it clear to Paul Bremer, the US
occupation chief who arrived in Iraq in May 2003, that:
"There was to be no privatisation of Iraqi oil resources or
facilities while I was involved."
Amy Jaffee says oil companies fear a privatisation would
exclude foreign firms
Ariel Cohen, of the neo-conservative Heritage Foundation,
told Newsnight that an opportunity had been missed to
privatise Iraq's oil fields.
He advocated the plan as a means to help the US defeat Opec,
and said America should have gone ahead with what he called
a "no-brainer" decision.
Mr Carroll hit back, telling Newsnight, "I would agree with
that statement. To privatize would be a no-brainer. It would
only be thought about by someone with no brain."
New plans, obtained from the State Department by Newsnight
and Harper's Magazine under the US Freedom of Information
Act, called for creation of a state-owned oil company
favoured by the US oil industry. It was completed in January
2004 under the guidance of Amy Jaffe of the James Baker
Institute in Texas.
Formerly US Secretary of State, Baker is now an attorney
representing Exxon-Mobil and the Saudi Arabian government.
View segments of Iraq oil plans at
www.GregPalast.com.
Questioned by Newsnight, Ms Jaffe said the oil industry
prefers state control of Iraq's oil over a sell-off because
it fears a repeat of Russia's energy privatisation. In the
wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union, US oil companies
were barred from bidding for the reserves.
Ms. Jaffe says US oil companies are not warm to any plan
that would undermine Opec and the current high oil price:
"I'm not sure that if I'm the chair of an American company,
and you put me on a lie detector test, I would say high oil
prices are bad for me or my company."
The former Shell oil boss agrees. In Houston, he told
Newsnight: "Many neo conservatives are people who have
certain ideological beliefs about markets, about democracy,
about this, that and the other. International oil companies,
without exception, are very pragmatic commercial
organizations. They don't have a theology."
A State Department spokesman told Newsnight they intended
"to provide all possibilities to the Oil Ministry of Iraq
and advocate none".
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Greg Palast's film - the result of a joint
investigation by Newsnight and Harper's Magazine - will be
broadcast on Thursday, 17 March, 2005. Newsnight is
broadcast every weekday at 10.30pm on BBC Two in the UK.
You can also watch the programme online - available for 24
hours after broadcast - from the Newsnight website
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