شركات النفط الأمريكية وراء احتلال العراق
رفعت عزت الفارسي
تعقيبا على مقال كنت قد كتبته في حزيران 2006 تحت عنوان
" التنازل عن مصدر سيادة العراق" ، استناداً الى دراسة وضعتها مؤسسة Platform البريطانية المختصة
بالدراسات النفطية، و كان هدفي منه توعية القارئ العراقي على الأهداف الحقيقية
للحملة العسكرية الأمريكية على العراق التي انتهت في 9/4/2003 وتم السيطرة على
العراق عسكرياً.
كنت في مقالي المذكور قد أثنيت على بعض
الكتاب الأمريكان الذين فضحوا الدوافع الحقيقية للحملة العسكرية الأمريكية، وهي السيطرة
على الثروة النفطية العراقية وتحويل العراق كذلك الى قاعدة عسكرية، وأن تحقيق
الهدف المذكور استوجب تفكيك العراق الى دويلات ( الفدرالية) وانهاء أي سلطة مركزية
ذات تأثر على الدولة العراقية بصورة فعالة الأمر الذي يسهل هذه المهمة ، وتمرير
دستور يحقق هذا الغرض. وهذا ما تم فعلاً بضلوع أطراف عراقية مع المخطط الأمريكي
لتحقيق مآرب هذه الفئات الاقليمية والطائفية واستئثارها ايضا بالثروة النفطية
العراقية، غير آبهين بمصير العراق كدولة.
اليوم أجد من المناسب أن أنقل الى
القارئ العراقي الكريم نصاً ما ورد في كتاب The Bush Agenda للكاتبة الأمريكية Antonia Juhasz.
المقطع التالي من الكتاب يعبر بوضوح عن الأطماع
النفطية للمآمرة الأمريكية على العراق والغرض من تفكيك الدولة العراقية ( الصفحات
324 – 326 من الكتاب) .
ومن الأدوات الاستعمارية لاستغلال
الثروة النفطية العراقية من قبل شركات النفط الأمريكية هو فرض العقود النفطية
المعروفة باسم ( Production
Sharing Agreement ) التي تحابي المستثمر الأجنبي على
حساب الصالح الوطني العراقي، كما ورد تفصيلا في دراسة مؤسسة (
بلاتفورم ) والتي كنت قد ضمنت مقالتي سالفة الذكر مقدمة الدراسة المذكورة.
جدير بالقراءة بإمعان: The Bush Agenda المقطع التالي من الكتاب
"…. Through decades of writing, policies, and
wars, the leading members of the administration clearly demonstrated their
shared desire to pursue greater U.S.
control over Iraq's
oil. The corporate and government officials on the Cheney Energy Task
Force mapped out their specific areas of interest in Iraq and then the Bush
administration waged a war to acquire them. The administration then set the
conditions ensuring U.S.
corporate access to Iraq's
oil through the Bremer Orders, Iraq's
new petroleum law, and the country's constitution.
The ultimate goal of this section is
to outline a path away from the oil economy, which the people of Iraq
may eventually welcome. For example, a friend from Iraq's
oil- rich Kirkuk
region recently told me that every day she wakes up and prays that the oil
beneath her home will dry up forever so that she and her family, friends, and
neighbors can one day live in peace. Her feelings are supported by the facts.
Countries with oil are more forty times more likely to be involved in civil
wars. They also have higher rates of poverty, indebtedness, corruption, and
totalitarian governments. Juan Pablo Perez Alfonzo, the cofounder of OPEC, once
said , oil is the " devil's excrement". The
death and devastation brought by the oil industry to Nigeria
and Ecuador
discussed earlier provides ample justification for such a view.
An Alternative Path for Iraq
In the near term, however, countries such as Iraq,
which are 95 percent dependent on oil wealth, will need to continue to export
their oil. To date, few large oil contracts have been signed in Iraq
and security remains too unstable for many foreign oil companies to get safely
to work. Therefore, if the Iraqi public so chooses, there is time to rewrite
the new Petroleum Law, the Bremer Orders, and even the Constitution. There
are also many alternative policies for managing the country's oil wealth from
which to choose.
U.S. oil companies and the Bush administration argue that Iraq
needs foreign investment to harness its oil wealth and that
Production Sharing Agreements (PSAs) are the
best way to attract this investment.
However, it is not at all obvious that Iraq needs foreign investors. Iraq's
oil investment requirement is estimated at around $3 billion per year. This is
well within the range of current budgetary allocations. The 2005 Iraqi oil
investment budget was $3 billion ( out of a total
Iraqi budget of around $30 billion). It is also highly likely that when
the occupation ends and U.S.
energy companies such as Halliburton depart, the attacks on Iraq's oil infrastructure will be
significantly reduced and exports will increase while costs go down. Iraq's
oil is relatively cheap to extract, the country is rich with the skill and
expertise necessary to run its systems, and there is a hungry world waiting for
its oil.
If Iraq
does decide to seek foreign investment, however, PSAs
are just one of several contractual options. PSAs
favor private companies at the expense of the exporting governments and
therefore just 12 percent of world oil reserves are subject to PSAs, compared to 67 percent developed solely or primarily
by national oil companies. PSAs are most often used
in countries with small reserves or reserves that are expensive to extract- two
conditions that could not be farther from Iraq's situation.
In a recent report, Greg Muttitt
of the London- based Platform oil research
organization lists three alternative options, which have recently been chosen
by Iraq's neighbors – Iran, Kuwait,
and Saudi Arabia:
risk service contracts, buyback contracts, and development and production contracts.
Muttitt explains that with each of these
arrangements, oil remains the property of the state and foreign compant is paid as the state's contractor. All three give operatorship of the field to a foreign company, but with
much more limited rights, and in the case of buybacks and development
production contracts, for a much more limited period of time than PSAs, The foreign company does not have the opportunity to
make excessive profits as it is paid either a fixed fee or a fixed rate of
return.
People in the United States, including elected
officials, can take the many steps outlined here to reduce and even eliminate
the Bush administrations influence over the Iraqi economy, its laws its
government, In this way, the Iraqi public will be freed to make its own
decisions regarding its oil wealth.
If Iraqis choose foreign investment, or if foreign investment happens against
their wishes, Americans and all residents of nations with oil companies
operating in Iraq
can exert influence over those companies to insure they operate in both legal
and socially and environmentally responsible ways and hold the companies
accountable when they do not. We can also support demands of Iraqi people
wrongly affected by the operations of our companies by holding the companies to
account at home through consumer and political campaigns and acts of
non-violent protest described in this chapter and throughout the book…. "
10/10/2006
Rfarisi@hotmail.com
rifaat_farisi@yahoo.com