'For the first time since the fall of Saddam Hussein, foreign oil companies will get a chance to work on Iraq's oil reserves when Baghdad auctions off contracts to develop six of its most prized oilfields on June 29-30.
Two undeveloped gas fields are also on offer.
Criticism from within the Iraqi state-run oil industry, pressure on the oil minister, and the terms of the contracts themselves make the deals risky and troublesome, but global oil firms say the potential is tantalizing.
Here are some facts about Iraq's oil industry:
HOW MUCH OIL AND GAS IS THERE?
Iraq is listed as having the world's third largest crude reserves at 115 billion barrels.
That estimate, however, is based on seismic data from nearly three decades ago and some experts believe there could be another 45 billion to 100 billion barrels of recoverable oil.
That could take Iraq's reserves close to top oil exporter Saudi Arabia's estimated 267 billion barrels.'
http://www.reuters.com/article/
w...E55O47E20090625
Things that usually make this sort of deal worth it:
1) The money from oil reserves that would probably go untapped in the near term without foreign partners.
2) Expertise for more efficient drilling and more complete harvesting.
These are things technicians can understand but makes no sense to the Man on the Street: "Well, why not do it ourselves and just buy the expertise." Easy in theory. Apparently difficult in reality.
see this Mojo?
Former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein bluffed about WMDs fearing Iranian arsenal, secret FBI files show
Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/...ixzz0JVM54BQ8&
C
FBI report: Saddam Hussein 'would have sought security agreement' with US --Iraq leader 'would have cut a deal' with Bush
24 Jun 2009
Saddam Hussein feared Iran's arsenal more than a U.S. attack, and even considered asking ex-President [sic] George W. Bush "to protect" Iraq from its neighbor, once secret FBI files show... Asked how he would have faced "fanatic" Iranian ayatollahs if Iraq had been proven toothless by UN weapons inspectors in 2003, Iraq's ex-president said he would have cut a deal with Bush. "Hussein replied Iraq would have been extremely vulnerable to attack from Iran and would have sought a security agreement with the U.S. to protect it from threats in the region," according to a 2004 FBI report among the declassified files. Without Bush's help, "Iraq would have done what was necessary," he told FBI Agent George Piro in his Baghdad International Airport cell. [Right, but there was the matter of the oil, right MOJO.) 
Saddam shoulda been overthrown in 1991. What a wasted opportunity!!
[cmar] "The money from oil reserves that would probably go untapped in the near term without foreign partners."
translated: "give Iraqi oil to the trustworthy Amreeki oil companies!"
The current oil deals that the ministry is offering will not give foreign companies control of Iraq's oil. They are technical service agreements where the companies get paid a fee for boosting production. They are not production sharing agreements where they get a cut of the production or can claim the oil reserves they are working on in their own books to boost their stock prices. They also have to give the Iraqi government hefty loans as a fee to just get started, and there are production quotas they have to reach otherwise they will be penalized.
The potential problem is that the Oil Ministry, parliament, Kurds, or provincial officials will screw up these deals because they're thinking about themselves rather than the country, which needs as much money as it can get right now.
"The potential problem is that the Oil Ministry, parliament, Kurds, or provincial officials will screw up these deals because they're thinking about themselves rather than the country, which needs as much money as it can get right now."
Oddly enough, before the invasion, Iraq was doing better with less, under sanctions. It was producing more oil, and more electricity. Maybe the genius foreigners that supposedly were going to fix these problems are actually way worse than Iraqi expertise?
Of course, given that the Iraqi Unions that run the oil sector are anti-invasion and probably not that sympathetic to maliki. it's not surprising that he's trying to diversify his dependencies.
Iraqi electricity production today is above 2002 and 2003 levels. Unfortunately, oil production (and natural gas production) remains very low. In fact, Iraq is shooting off a lot of its natural gas into the air without capturing it.
This is because the Iraqi Parliament cannot agree on how to let contracts out to develop Iraq's natural gas and oil resources.
I think Iraq should let out contracts through a transparent and competitive bidding process (RFQ . . . electronic request for quote . . . were each bidder offers a bid including their offering with respect to each metric . . . there can be more than 100 metrics to a big in an RFQ.)
The Iraqi Unions supported the Iraqi Communist Party (ICP) and fought with Saddam in the Iraqi resistance. Of course, kill ISF Bruno backed the mass murder of the ICP when it joined the Iraqi Governing Council in July 2003, the Allawi government and the Iraqi Parliament.
The Iraqi Unions would tear Bruno apart piece by piece if they heard Bruno's veiled pro Baa3thi, pro Advocate sentiments.
"It was producing more oil, and more electricity."
Sounds like you pulled that one out of your ass. Oil production is about the same, and it would be much higher if the Iraqis could come to a consensus and an oil law. Electricity production is much higher.
OIL PRODUCTION:
_Prewar: 2.58 million barrels per day.
_May 27, 2009: 2.41 million barrels per day.
ELECTRICITY:
_Prewar nationwide: 3,958 megawatts. Hours per day (estimated): 4-8.
_May 23, 2009 nationwide: 6065 megawatts.
http://iraqimojo.blogspot.com/20...ey-
figures.html
Electricity and oil production would also be higher if the "resistance" hadn't blown up oil pipelines and electricity infrastructure.
http://iraqimojo.blogspot.com/20...ng-
victims.html
Angry Iraqis demand protection from bombings
By Muhanad Mohammed
Reuters
Thursday, June 25, 2009; 12:07 PM
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Hundreds of angry Iraqis gathered on Thursday around the wreckage of a market bombing in Baghdad where 78 people were killed, demanding better protection from the government when U.S. troops pull back to rural bases.
A string of blasts has cast doubt on Iraqi forces' ability to keep the lid on a stubborn insurgency as U.S. combat troops withdraw from towns and cities by June 30. More explosions on Thursday killed five policemen and at least two civilians.
Violence has dropped sharply across Iraq in the past year, but militants including Sunni Islamist al Qaeda continue to launch car and suicide bombings aimed at undermining the Shi'ite Muslim-led government and reigniting sectarian conflict.
Residents at the site of Wednesday's blast in Baghdad's Sadr City slum sobbed and hugged each other, and many furiously cursed the authorities. The blast came four days after U.S. soldiers handed control of the Shi'ite area to Iraqi forces.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/
wp...9062500434.html
Overall oil production is not as important as the export figures. The two are not always connected. There have been months when one went up and the other went down.
Here's a rundown of monthly oil production and exports since the U.S. invasion:
http://
musingsoniraq.blogspot.co...neven_3310.html
The reason why the oil fields aren't producing as much as they could are: 1) The looting after the invasion caused billions of dollars in damages, 2) brain drain has denied industry many technocrats, 3) insurgent attacks, are now almost over but again cost a ton to repair and disrupted exports, 4) deteriorating infrastructure, 5) Basra port is small, corrupt and falling apart
In the population centers, particularly where we have succeeded in rebuilding infrastructure and schools, there may be a fair amount of land value.
To whom is the rent on that land going? A wise country would collect that rent to help fund public spending.
We're not that smart in the US, so I'm not sure why we would expect them to be smarter than we are, but it is something to think about.
Every well-spend infrastructure dollar creates more than $1 in land value. The question is whether it is left for the private sector, or, as wise people including Adam Smith and Henry George and Milton Friedman have seen, is collected for public purposes. Recycling, if you will.
LVTfan, the GoI owns a lot of land whose value has appreciated. One question I don't know the answer to is how much land provincial and local governments own versus the central government.
Iraq's government is so corrupt and subject to electoral pork (hiring unqualified people to public sector jobs so that politicians that demonstrate that they have "heart"), that the GoI finds it very difficult to profitably and efficiently run business enterprises. For example Muqtada al Sadr was famous for hiring 13 and 14 year olds to work in Iraq's health care and transportation ministries (13 year olds working in airports.) No doubt Muqtada did this to help out their poor families, but the quality of government run services fell apart.
Anand, it is the rent on the land occupied by individuals and companies I'm interested in. When we or GoI make good investments in infrastructure, whoever owns the land is greatly enriched. To whom is that benefit going. I advocate recycling that value, by collecting, for public purposes, the rental value of all the land. Reinvest that in schools and electrical and other infrastructure, which will make Iraq a better place to live, and, in turn increase the rent. People will choose where to live based on how much infrastructure they want to pay for ... and know that it is their housing dollars paying for it, not a tax on their wages or their purchases.
The alternative is letting that increased value stay in private (landlord or homeowner) pockets, and to do so will lead to great inequality. Those who own the best-located, best-served land will be greatly enriched; those who own poorly served land or are tenants will be impoverished.
Which sort of society would we prefer to see?
"Which sort of society would we prefer to see?"
(landlord or homeowner) pockets
Ahmadinejad and Critic
http://mypetjawa.mu.nu/archives/...ives/
198015.php
LVTfan, what makes you believe that an ownership society leads to “great inequality?” I would rather see Iraqis live in prosperity rather than equality. When everyone is equally poor and the state owns all the land, the only reality is the oppression of its citizens.
Aton, I'm all for ownership of things manmade. But land is different in character, and when some of us own it, without owing the community, we disinherit everyone else.
The way to make secure ownership of land fair to all is for those who own the land to owe to their community the economic rent on the land. (No taxes on what they produce, no taxes on what they buy or build, just on what they take from the commons.)
This is the route to widely shared prosperity, which I believe to be a far more worthy goal than prosperity only for those who own land, to the exclusion of those who are born with none or must mortgage themselves forever to purchase some from someone who didn't create that land value.
I realize this sounds radical and different, but I have arrived, slowly and even grudgingly, at the perspective that it is the route to genuine justice and opportunity for all. Might I send you to a book which might help illuminate? It is "Progress and Poverty" readable online at http://www.progressandpoverty.org/ and it lays out very well how we can have widely shared prosperity, and why our current situation leads to wealth concentration in the hands of a few of us -- and oppression for the rest.
I'll be interested in your comments when you've had a chance to read it. (or listen: mp3 is available at http://www.hgchicago.org/audio ).
LTVFan, there is economic literature on what you write. The way countries chose to capture these "commons" is via property taxes. I support property taxes. I hope the GoI imposes property taxes too.
I agree with Aton that the government owning too many businesses, or too much property, is scary.
Anand,
Conventional property taxes fall onto building values, too, and that is counterproductive. Far better would be to separate the tax on buildings from the tax on the value of land and other things created or made valuable by the community, and reduce or eliminate the tax on buildings, while using more heavily the tax on land value.
I don't want the government owning businesses, though I think a good case could be made that such things as utilities might be owned by the community rather than by shareholders from elsewhere. The water company in my town in lower New England is owned by an Australian corporation. I'm not sure that that's such a great idea. We depend on those natural resources, and I have issues with the profits on them not being recycled locally for local purposes.
Mojo might want to take note of this:
"The parliament has authorized the Central Bank to issue treasury bills to raise $2.4 billion for the Ministry of Electricity, a parliamentary source said. The source refusing to be named said the money will be specifically used to finance contracts by the ministry to boost power supply in the country. Power output is still below pre- 2003-U.S. invasion rates despite the funneling of billions of dollars into the national grid."
http://www.azzaman.com/english/i...9-06-
20kurd.htm
Maybe the State Department guys which supply AP with their stats know more about Iraqi electrical production than Iraqis? Probably they're using the same sources that told them about the WMD.
Jarab from Azzaman say that electrical power output in Iraq is less than pre-2003 levels? and these are the same people who support the resistance that has caused the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis? and your link doesn't work? and I'm supposed to believe you and the quarter brained jarab? try again, Bruno. I would believe the Associated Press any day before I believe the scum of earth 3arab jarab, whose actions resulted in the mass murder of Iraqi women and children and the destruction of Iraq's electrical infrastructure.
I do wonder how the jarab from Azzaman came up with their numbers. Too bad the link doesn't work.
From a May 2005 WP article: "Even before the U.S. invasion, Iraq's power system did not produce enough power to meet demand, which ranged from 3,000 to 6,500 megawatts, depending on the weather. Before March 2003, average output was 4,400 megawatts, according to the Brookings' Iraq Index.
Former president Saddam Hussein drained power from other parts of the country to serve Baghdad. U.S. occupation authorities ordered that the burden be equally shared, and the routine almost everywhere has been three hours on, three hours off."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/
wp...43001121_2.html
'During the summer of 2003, U.S. officials spent about $230 million on emergency repairs and brought grid production back to around 3,500 megawatts. In the fall, they launched a campaign to increase output to 4,400 megawatts by midwinter, concentrating on repairs and purchasing spare parts. When that succeeded, they set a new goal: Reach 6,000 megawatts by June 1, 2004.
"The mantra was 'megawatts on the grid,' " recalled a senior U.S. Embassy official involved in reconstruction who could not be identified under embassy ground rules. "We didn't make it."
By this point, U.S. officials knew that they had initially failed to grasp how fragile the network was. Decades of poor maintenance, the U.S. bombing of Iraqi infrastructure in 1991, more than a dozen years of harsh economic sanctions and postwar looting in 2003 contributed to a state of severe dilapidation not fully recognized at first.
"It was like trying to restore a rusty old car on a farm some place," said the embassy official. "You repair it when you really should have started from scratch. But we didn't have the time or the money to do that."
It was a misjudgment that still bedevils the U.S. effort, according to the latest report on U.S. reconstruction delivered to Congress in April. The report said the "original estimate of the damage done to the basic infrastructure from decades of neglect and warfare was significantly underestimated," and as a result, "more time and resources are required to stand-up and maintain systems than originally thought."
Another major drag on increasing the grid's output has been insufficient fuel supplies. The favored fuels are either natural gas or diesel. But because Iraq does not produce enough diesel and has little natural gas, it has been substituting other fuels. The substitutes make generators less efficient. State Department figures released in mid-April, for example, indicate that nearly 1,000 megawatts are "currently offline in unplanned outages" and that 341 of those are "due to insufficient fuel supplies."
But perhaps the biggest constraint has been the insurgency, which Whitaker called "a big wet blanket that's thrown over the projects. It's a big decelerator." In a dramatic example, a huge, German-made 260-megawatt combustion turbine generator for Kirkuk power station sat in Jordan for at least six months until U.S. military and civilian officials could organize a convoy to bring it unscathed through insurgent territory.'
http://www.washingtonpost.com/
wp...43001121_2.html
The Sunni Arabs from Morocco to the slimy kingdom of 3arab jarab tried their hardest to destroy the new Iraq. They failed.
Mojo, every 3 months this 9010 report summarizes Iraq's electricity production:
http://www.defenselink.mil/pubs/
..._March_2009.pdf
The next report is out in a few days. When it comes out, it might be worth summarizing some economic sections of it in articles. DJ summarizes the ISF portions of the report.
The report draws its raw data from the Iraqi electricity and energy ministries.
[mojo] "I would believe the Associated Press any day"
... who get their stats from the State Department, the collection of the biggest liars on the planet ...
[mojo] "before I believe the scum of earth 3arab jarab"
... which is why Iraqi parliament is allocating millions to try and prop up the utterly shitty job that the Amreeki and their butt-lickers did on the Iraqi power grid, right? Of course, a major Iraqi newspaper doesn't have a clue, and neither does the Iraqi parliament, right? 
Mojo, frothing at the mouth, as usual ...
[mojo] "whose actions resulted in the mass murder of Iraqi women and children and the destruction of Iraq's electrical infrastructure."
1: Ol' Mojo has to get in a sectarian dig, or his day's not complete. Froth, froth, froth.
2: Ol' Mojo might want to read his own damn articles before posting them next time:
"Decades of poor maintenance, the U.S. bombing of Iraqi infrastructure in 1991, more than a dozen years of harsh economic sanctions and postwar looting in 2003 contributed to a state of severe dilapidation not fully recognized at first."
And then you can add: "Outrageous profiteering and utter incompetence by supposedly genius-level Amreeki engineers capped it off"
Since ol' Mojo loves AMERICAN sources so much:
" Prior to the 1991 war, total electric capacity was 9,500 megawatts. March 2003 it's much, much lower.
There is no electric power available in Southern Central Iraq or there has been none available and that has again impact. The water supply for Iraq is provided by pumps that are electrically powered. The water sanitation equipment is run by electric power. The wastewater treatment plants are run by electric power. So these are all linked requirements and necessities.
Again, going through today's daily report, with respect to electricity, we find the supply of power in Iraq remains at about 1,800 megawatts, and again that's from a pre-war capacity of about 9,500. Pre-conflict, immediately before this conflict, the capacity was 5,500. So from '91 to this war, there was a drop from '95 to '55 and then post-conflict, it's now come back to 1,800."
http://www.usaid.gov/iraq/
vid_li...ve042903_t.html
So, in other words, Papa Hussein was supplying Iraq with 9500 MW of power in 1991, before the Americans came and fucked up the electrical grid? I bet that Mojo will get butt-cramps upon hearing this news ...
Oh, wait, sorry, I was wrong. It wasn't Millions the Iraqi Parliament wanted to devote to repairing the mess the Americans made out of the grid ... it's BILLIONS:
Electricity Minister Karim Hasan said $2.4 billion of the planned $3 billion bond issue, which was approved by the cabinet earlier this month, would be earmarked for power projects. [...] Iraqis say the country's faltering electricity system is one of their main sources of frustration. Many parts of Iraq have just a few hours of electricity per day.The design capacity of the country's power plants is 11,000 megawatts but they are running at about half that level. "Hopefully, in parliament this week they will decide to pay around $2.4 billion ... to fund electricity projects," Hasan told Reuters. In 2008, Iraq signed multi-billion-dollar deals with General Electric and Siemens to add nearly 9,000 megawatts of capacity over the next few years. [...] In 2006, the ministry launched a 10-year plan to restore the country's power supply which had been destroyed during the 2003 US-led invasion which toppled Saddam's rule.
http://www.arabianbusiness.com/5...tricity-
funding
1: I note that US Aid earmarked Iraqi power output in 2003 at 5500MW
2: I note that Saddam (mojo's nemesis) had planned out an (evil - of course) power grid of ~11000 MW
3: I note that the Iraqis say that current output is half of that. That would be 5500 MW.
4: I note that therefore at best, we're looking at a match of the 2003 output.
5: I conclude therefore that American intervention in Iraq was counterproductive in the matter of giving Iraq electricity.
There is a good blogger brief by the GoI electricity minister explaining his long term capital spending plans in quite a bit of granular detail; for those who are interested.
The long term spending plans by the Iraqis, in order to correct war-induced damages? No doubt, no doubt.
Iraq was doing fine before Saddam led the country to war and ruin.
This graph says it all: http://bp0.blogger.com/_yQ3RrVdI...index+69-
07.jpg
Iraq was not Saddam, and Saddam was not Iraq.
American intervention in Iraq in 2003 was productive in removing a dictator who mass murdered Iraqis. That's a good thing. Shoulda happened in 1991.
Don't bomb any more markets, please ya 3arab jarab.
Where do the 3arab jarab get their news?
http://iraqimojo.blogspot.com/20...-
education.html
Nice graph Mojo. So, beyond proving that the Baath ran Iraq better than Maliki, what are you trying to say?
{mojo] "American intervention in Iraq in 2003 was productive in removing a dictator who mass murdered Iraqis."
Too bad that they managed to virtually destroy the country in the process. But then, Mojo doesn't care, so long as they also killed some "jarab" or people he thinks were "jarab" in the process.
Hey, so what if the country devolved into a sectarian bloodbath?
It was worth it!
But it was the Wahhabi and Ba3thi jarab who destroyed Iraq after 2003, in order to prove that life for Iraqis was better for them under Saddam. How brilliant!
The US military had already destroyed Iraq in 1991, with the help of the Kingdom of Jarab, of course.
'Allied bombing raids were successful in destroying Iraqi civilian infrastructure. 11 of Iraq's 20 major power stations and 119 substations were totally destroyed, while a further six major power stations were damaged.[39][40] At the end of the war, electricity production was at four percent of its pre-war levels. Bombs destroyed the utility of all major dams, most major pumping stations and many sewage treatment plants, turning Iraq from one of the most advanced Arab countries into one of the most primitive. Telecommunications equipment, port facilities, oil refineries and distribution, railroads and bridges were also destroyed.'
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_War
The jarab were evidently happy with Iraqis living in the stone age between 1991 and 2003. Fvcking scum buckets.
"Hey, so what if the country devolved into a sectarian bloodbath? "
Hey, why did the Sunni 3arab jarab bomb the Iraqi Shia for so long? Why do they continue to do so?
Where does Democracy Now get its news?
' "If Iraq has had it bad over the past three decades, then Basra has had it the worst. Parts of the Iran-Iraq war were fought virtually at the gates of the city. In 1991 an estimated 250,000 people died in the uprising against former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein.
As a punishment the regime left the city to rot, and it shows. The buildings are crumbling, and the canals, which once led to the city being compared favorably to Venice, are filled with rubbish.'
http://i3.democracynow.org/2003/
...t_in_basra_over
Maybe Bruno's jarab friends were comparing the amount of electricity Baghdadis have now (or since 2003) to pre-war levels and not the amount of electricity in the entire country. Before 2003 Saddam and his Ba3thi bitches were stealing electricity from the south and giving it to Baghdad (and no doubt Tikrit), leaving cities like Basra with very little electricity.
From a Dec 2007 article: 'Mr. Hasan has one of the least enviable tasks in the Iraqi government: to repair a ravaged electricity grid battered by both sabotage and years of neglect under the tyranny of Saddam Hussein.
Since the fall of Saddam, Sunni Arab insurgents in particular have waged a war on Iraq's power grid and specifically its transmission towers and the oil and gas pipelines that provide Iraq's generators with the fuel they convert to megawatts.
Two prior electricity ministers left their posts with little success in rebuilding their country's power grid, and the job was not considered a prized favor by the various parties trying to divvy up the Iraqi government in the spring of 2006.
In an interview yesterday with The New York Sun, Mr. Hasan said Baghdad residents on average receive 12 hours of power a day from the battered Iraqi electricity grid. But he expected that by 2011, Baghdadis would have 18 hours a day, the average under Saddam Hussein before his regime toppled.
"I am realistic, not optimistic," the minister said. "Now I am planning to build 11 new projects in Iraq, five are in Baghdad. I am contracting seven more generation plants and 18 transmission projects. The generation projects will be completed before next summer, to improve supply to Baghdad and all of Iraq. I could not be guaranteed this would be complete."
Mr. Hasan is careful to explain that some elements of his work are not in his control, namely the fight against the insurgency and the repair of the oil and gas lines that his generators need to make the electricity. But he also said the recent progress against the Sunni insurgency has curbed the number of attacks on the transmission towers.'
http://www.studentnewsdaily.com/..._level_by_2011/
"In 2002 Baghdad had access to electricity on a near continuous basis while the rest of Iraq was limited to 3 to 6 hours daily. The U.S. government has made significant progress in improving electricity supply in Iraq and distributing it more equitably throughout the country. USAID recently completed its three-year, $2.3 billion Iraq Infrastructure Reconstruction Program. Through its overall program, USAID has added 1,292 megawatts of electric generating capacity to Iraq's power grid, serving over 7 million Iraqis.
Expanding Access to Electricity
Restoring and improving Iraq's electricity supply has been USAID's biggest and most costly challenge. In April 2003, Iraq's usable electrical generation capacity was 2,500 MW - 58 percent of the pre-conflict level. Before the conflict, access to power was unreliable and varied greatly throughout the country. USAID worked to restore electricity to homes, public facilities, and business throughout Iraq.
USAID has helped increase electrical generation to an average daily peak of approximately 4,500 MW. However, estimated total demand in Iraq is 8,500 MW and the looting of cables, destruction of hightension towers, and sabotage of fuel lines persist. Decades of operation without regular maintenance have resulted in increased breakdown and a need for significant rehabilitation."
http://www.usaid.gov/iraq/
accomp...lectricity.html
Ali Hassan al-Majid and the Basra Massacre of 1999
http://www.hrw.org/en/reports/20...a-massacre-
1999
I wonder how much electricity Saddam's palaces got.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_ne...ews/
2925297.stm
[mojo] "In 1991 an estimated 250,000 people died"
"an estimated 250,000 people"
"an estimated"
"estimated"
I love it how people toss around numbers like popcorn. The original 'estimate' that I read was 100000. Now its up to 250K. Next, we'll hear that millions died.
I think it would be an excellent idea to conduct an actual scientific study into the matter, so that we can stop hearing about these 'estimates' from all and sundry.
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