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Why Asian Oil Firms are Likely to be First at Iraq's Oil

April 5, 2007 - From: money.cnn.com

by Steve Hargreaves

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Despite claims by some critics that the Bush administration invaded Iraq to take control of its oil, the first contracts with major oil firms from Iraq's new government are likely to go not to U.S. companies, but rather to companies from China, India, Vietnam, and Indonesia.

While Iraqi lawmakers struggle to pass an agreement on exactly who will award the contracts and how the revenue will be shared, experts say a draft version that passed the cabinet earlier this year will likely uphold agreements previously signed by those countries under Saddam Hussein's government.

"The Chinese could announce something within the next few months" if all goes well with the oil law, said James Placke, a senior associate at Cambridge Energy Research Associates who specializes in the Middle East.

The Asian firms are at an advantage for several reasons.

First, less constrained by Western sanctions during the Hussein regime, they've been operating in Iraq and know the country's oilfields, said Falah Aljibury, an energy analyst who has advised several Iraqi oil ministers as well as other OPEC nations.

Aljibury said the first contracts likely awarded will be to the Chinese in the south central part of Iraq, the Vietnamese in the south, the Indians along the Kuwaiti border, and the Indonesians in the western desert.

The contracts under consideration are small.

Aljibury said the Chinese agreement is to produce about 70,000 barrels of oil a day, while the Vietnamese one is for about 60,000.

It's hard to put a dollar amount on what those contracts might be worth, as security costs, drilling conditions and the exact terms to be offered by Baghdad are unknown, said Christopher Ruppel, a senior geopolitical analyst with the consulting firm John S. Herold.

But the barrel amount is tiny even by Iraq's depressed post-war production of around 2 million barrels a day.

And the country is thought to be able to ramp up production to over 3 million barrels a day with fairly little effort, providing the security situation improves.  Rosy estimates even have Iraq producing 6 million barrels a day in the long term, which would make it the world's No. 4 producer behind Russia, Saudi Arabia and the United States.

But the Asian firms are also well positioned to grab further contracts.

Having avoided military entanglements in the region, they may curry more favor with the Iraqi people.

"They have no involvement with the secular or ethnic people," said Aljibury.  "The conditions favor them."

Given its rapidly growing thirst for oil, combined with its feeling of isolation from world oil markets, China is sometimes viewed as more cavalierthan Western oil firms when it comes to putting capital and people at risk.  That could lead them to sign contracts in violent Iraq sooner than Western firms.

"The Chinese seem to be willing to go places where other companies can't find workers to go," said Adam Sieminski, chief energy economist at Deutsche Bank.

But none of this suggests Western firms like ExxonMobil, Chevron, BP, and Royal Dutch Shell will be completely cut out of the action.

First, their technical prowess is world renowned.

"I have not heard anything from any Iraqi ministers against U.S. oil companies," said Aljibury.  "In fact, I have heard the opposite.  They are the best in field exploration and development.  They want them."

Second, Iraq's oil contract game has just begun.

According to a letter supplied by John S. Herold's Ruppel, memorandums of understanding have been signed with all the oil majors for several years.  And Iraqi Oil Minister Hussein al-Shahristani has said the country plans to tender for major oil projects in the second half of 2007.


Steve Kretzmann, executive director of Oil Change International, an industry watchdog group, criticized the draft oil law for allowing long-term oil contracts to be awarded to foreign oil firms, a practice he said was unique in the Middle East.

"Giving out a few crumbs to the Chinese and Indians is one thing," said Kretzmann, who noted the draft law was seen by both the Bush administration and the International Monetary Fund before it was given to Iraq's parliament.  "But the real prize are the contracts that award long-term rights.  I think the [Western oil companies] are biding their time."


Free Mumia!  No more prisons!

Wait...  That white man said a bad word...  Jail him!

9-Month Sentence for Making Racial Slurs Against Seattle Clerk

May 24, 2007 - From: seattlepi.nwsource.com

SEATTLE -- A man who made racial slurs against a store clerk who refused to sell him alcohol has been sentenced in Seattle to nine months in jail.

Thirty-five-year-old Brian Lappin of Seattle apologized today in King County Superior Court for his behavior.  Judge Michael Hayden told him that being drunk was no excuse and gave him the maximum nine-month sentence.

Lappin had pleaded guilty to malicious harassment, a hate crime, for the incident in February at Saleh's Delicatessen in the Ballard neighborhood.

When the owner, Steven Saleh, who is from Yemen refused to sell him alcohol Lappin tried to grab him and called him names.

Police say a Shoreline woman with Lappin, Nichol Kirk, also called Saleh names.  Her trial is set for June eleventh.

The incident was captured on store video and Saleh and his nephew, who was in the store, were called un-American Arab terrorists.


Here's a real shocker!  I wonder what shady Arabs the Eurosavages have been hanging around?

Raid on Spy's Home Reveals Details of Chirac's Secret £30m Bank Account

May 24, 2007 - From: news.scotsman.com

By Susan Bell

LONG-STANDING rumours that the former French president Jacques Chirac holds a secret multi-million-euro bank account in Japan appear to have been confirmed by files seized from the home of a senior spy.



Papers seized by two investigating magistrates from General Philippe Rondot, a former head of the DGSE, France's intelligence service, show Mr Chirac opened an account in the mid-1990s at Tokyo Sowa Bank, credited with the equivalent of £30 million.  It is not known where the money came from, nor whether it is connected to various kick-back scandals to which Mr Chirac's name has been linked over the past decade.

Last year, Mr Chirac "categorically denied" having a bank account in Japan.

The seized documents have been described by the magistrates as "explosive" and are believed to contain copies of the former president's bank statements.

A magistrate close to the investigation told the satirical magazine Le Canard Enchaine: "Subject to verification of the documents, there is enough material to open a new judicial investigation for breach of trust or for possession of money received from corruption.  Moreover, the investigating judges have everything necessary to trace the network back to its ringleaders."

Mr Chirac, who was succeeded by Nicolas Sarkozy last week after 12 years as president, looks certain to be questioned about the account - as well as several other alleged corruption scandals dating from his time as mayor of Paris - when his presidential immunity runs out on 16 June.

The alleged evidence was discovered by judges Jean-Marie d'Huy and Henri Pons after they seized 112 bound files and numerous other documents from the home of Gen Rondot in connection with their inquiry into an alleged smear campaign.  Dubbed "The French Watergate", it centred on whether Dominique de Villepin, the then prime minister, had asked Gen Rondot to dig up dirt on Mr Sarkozy, then interior minister, who had been wrongly accused of receiving kickbacks from the £1.4 billion sale of French frigates to Taiwan in 1991.

Claims of Mr Chirac's secret nest egg first came to the attention of the French authorities in 1996 when his friend Shoichi Osada, a Japanese banker, decided to invest £500 million in France, so triggering a routine investigation by the DGSE, which is said to have stumbled upon the then president's Japanese account.

Thrown into a panic, Mr Chirac is said to have summoned Gen Rondot in 2001 and ordered him to destroy all DGSE evidence of the account.  Unfortunately for the president, the spy simply removed the notes and memos about the affair to his home, where they were seized in March last year by Mr d'Huy and Mr Pons.  Since then, the judges have been discreetly pursuing an investigation, interviewing 20 intelligence officers about the affair.

Mr Chirac is reported to have struck a deal with Mr Sarkozy, whereby the latter will push through judicial reforms ensuring the ex-president escapes prosecution.  However, the magistrates are expected to move before the reforms are passed this summer.


    

"Cultured" Eurosavages in action.