Is Big Oil Going to Control Iraq’s Reserves?

By Christian Parenti, The Nation
Posted on March 6, 2007, Printed on March 6, 2007

War and corruption have crippled Iraq's ability to export oil. But that's not stopping Big Oil's efforts to control and profit from what's left.

Iraq's postwar oil bonanza remains a mirage. The country has the second- or third-largest reserves in the world, making petroleum the heart and vast bulk of its economy. Thus in March 2003 did Paul Wolfowitz assure Congress that Iraq would "finance its own reconstruction, and relatively soon." American planners predicted that Iraq's oil production would triple to a feverish 6 million barrels per day by 2010.

Instead war, corruption, sectarian slaughter and a massive crime wave have reduced the country's once mighty petroleum sector to an industrial zombie: still ambulatory, functional but essentially dead.