Who will get most of the Oil fields in Iraq?

Also see:
http://www.hubdub.com/m45877/Iraq__Which_company_will_win_the_bidding_for_the_Mansouria_gas_field
http://www.hubdub.com/m45876/Iraq__Which_company_will_win_the_bidding_for_the_Akkas_gas_field
http://www.hubdub.com/m45875/Iraq__Which_company_will_win_the_bidding_for_the_Bai_Hassan_oil_field_of_Kirkuk
http://www.hubdub.com/m45874/Iraq__Which_company_will_win_the_bidding_for_the_Kirkuk_oil_field
http://www.hubdub.com/m45873/Iraq__Which_company_will_win_the_bidding_for_the_Missan_oil_fields
http://www.hubdub.com/m45872/Iraq__Which_company_will_win_the_bidding_for_the_Basra_oil_field_of_Zubair
http://www.hubdub.com/m45871/Iraq__Which_company_will_win_the_bidding_for_the_Basra_oil_field_of_West_Qurna
http://www.hubdub.com/m45870/Iraq__Which_company_will_win_the_bidding_for_the_Basra_oil_field_of_Rumaila

Any idea as to when the winning bids will be announced?

Question is set to suspend tomorrow...

The bid round was planned to take place Monday, but the ministry postponed the first session to Tuesday because of a sandstorm that prevented airplanes carrying international companies' officials from landing at Baghdad airport. The awards were supposed to be announced in two sessions, one on Monday and one on Tuesday.

"We will try to complete the entire process on Tuesday but, if need be, it will be extended into Wednesday," said Abdul Mehdy al-Ameedi, deputy head of the oil ministry's Petroleum Contracts and Licensing Directorate, or PCLD.

http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-20090629-708733.html

So is the proposed suspension time reasonable, or should it be pushed back a few hours....thanks

Great Q krujis. As if there's any doubt who's nailing those contracts.

"... even if we (America) didn't go into Iraq for the oil, we sure as hell weren't leaving without it." - Greg Palast

So nice to see what the newest faux democracy looks like.

I'm not sure if I'm here at the moment the result are announced. but it would be good to leave this and the other ones open as long as possible.

What a glorious day for oil execs everywhere. And the people of Iraq can now be so grateful for the freedom that this day will always represent.

In an attempt to make this seem unjust some may use a metaphor of a bully elbowing his way to the cookie jar. Realistically how can such amazing and gracious deeds of this past war go unrewarded in our civilized society of today?

Developing an Iraqi corporation to manage their own oilfields would clearly not in the best interest of Iraq. That was part of the problem before we went to war with them. Just look at Venezuela and how annoying they are now.

mork - very well stated. there might be some who would want/force iraq to do it on their own. you know make them wait decades if not longer to modernise their oil production. :O)

how dare they make things so simple. jsvengy candyboy buckojo says its way more complicated. guess they forgot to consult him before going forward. :O)

DD - Im pretty sure mork is being sarcastic...

BTW - i only use one tag on this site.

well done dieseldog: you got hand on the strike markup.
but who is candyboy?

The first licensing round of auctions for eight oil and gas fields in Iraq concluded Tuesday with only one successful bid.

A consortium led by BP PLC and including China National Petroleum Co. won the bid for the Rumaila oil field in southeastern Iraq.

Oil companies were surprised by the Iraqi oil ministry's aggressive pricing. The ministry gave a maximum per barrel fee for increasing current production at $2 a barrel for several fields. But the oil firms gave bids of around twice that figure to more than 10 times the oil ministry amount.

In a uniquely transparent process, the bids were open in public and winners were awarded points based on a mathematical formula established by the ministry. There were gasps after some bids were revealed, while everyone clapped each time an oil firm representative submitted a bid in a clear box set on a stage.

"It's surprisingly well organized for this kind of unusual process," said one Asian oil company official.

Iraq's internal politics and nationalist sensitivities surrounding the country's oil supply have complicated the bid round, with some lawmakers calling for a delay of the process and questioning the legality of the contracts.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124635835306572521.html

@Koolcraft
Thanks for the informative link.

(Boy, did I bet wrong on this one. . . )

... looking at that red line, I guess many people did so, chatarra

Happy Fourth!

As July 4th, our Independence Day, rolls around and we begin our troop withdrawal; as the Iraqis celebrate and after untold thousands of US soldiers have died and a million Iraqis to boot . . .

After the torturous interrogations by not so intelligent intelligence and contractors for actionable intelligence; after contaminating the country with Depleted Uranium; after shocking and awing the Cradle of Civilization and poisoning its food chain for posterity . . .

But mostly, after Bush and Cheney lied their way into war in search of non-existent weapons of mass destruction, now we allow the Chinese to do Iraq’s oil contract bidding so they won’t call in our two trillion in debt markers. Have a beer on me. Have two. For the two trillion we’ve blown in this pointless, even humiliating war.

As the New York Times reports in As Iraq Stabilizes, China Bids on Its Oil Fields, our British “buddies” BP are partnered with the China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) to win the first awarded contract in the latest Chinese grab for Iraq’s oil, a bit ballsy even though the country remains in our somewhat illegal sphere of interest.

http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_4867.shtml

"...after Bush and Cheney lied their way into war in search of non-existent weapons of mass destruction..."

Like Francisco Franco, Saddam Hussein is still dead, but the Washington Post reports on a new (all right, newly released) series of interviews with the Iraqi dictator, who was hanged in 2006 for crimes against humanity. The Post reports that Saddam acknowledged to an FBI interviewer "that he allowed the world to believe he had weapons of mass destruction because he was worried about appearing weak to Iran":

Hussein, in fact, said he felt so vulnerable to the perceived threat from "fanatic" leaders in Tehran that he would have been prepared to seek a "security agreement with the United States to protect [Iraq] from threats in the region." . . .

Hussein noted that Iran's weapons capabilities had increased dramatically while Iraq's weapons "had been eliminated by the UN sanctions," and that eventually Iraq would have to reconstitute its weapons to deal with that threat if it could not reach a security agreement with the United States.

The bad news is that Iran continues to pursue nuclear weapons. The good news is that Iraq has reached a security agreement with the U.S.

This ought to (but will not) silence those who've been determined to rewrite history with the claim that Iraq's weapons of mass destruction were an invention of President Bush. Bush did not lie; he made a mistake--the same mistake everyone else in the world made, and a mistake Saddam, now by his own admission, encouraged them to make.

If Saddam was a victim, it was not of American lies and aggression but of his own too-successful efforts at misdirection.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/01/AR2009070104217.html

"Mistaken"

Sure. But are we to ignore how that mistake happened. Yes, perhaps Saddam wanted people to believe that he had WMD's when he actually didn't. It needs to be recalled however that the US Intel service that provided the 'irrefutable proof' of WMD's appears to have been largely influenced by perceived prevailing ideology of the US administration; notsimply a con job from Saddam.

Ideology obviates the need for crude conspiracy. How many other 'mistakes' will be swept under the carpet or left unaccountable because of systemic ideological failures which remain unadressed?

@Erik.

Just see some circumstances in a brighter light:

So: The US intelligence services failed to see through Saddams illusion of WMD. Although the "proof" presented by the US to the UN was everything but convincing - even to many Americans (see below) - they did not manage to reveal that there actually were no WMD. Somehow, I can't conclude otherwise than to assume intend, because I cannot believe that US intelligence services are so dumb or incompetent.

So: If the US would actually have wanted to remove a "thread" of WMD, which Iraq knowingly was not, they could have cooperated with Iraq. I am quite certain that the US knew . But it wasn't even worth a consideration. Why?

Erik, may I remind you of the following:

"The poll found 63% of Americans want President Bush to find a diplomatic solution. What's more, Americans seem to want hard evidence that Iraq is cheating. More than two-thirds (77% to 17%) say if inspectors haven't found a smoking gun, they should keep looking."
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/01/23/opinion/polls/main537739.shtml
"THE former American secretary of state Colin Powell has revealed that he spent 2½ hours vainly trying to persuade President George W Bush not to invade Iraq"
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article2042072.ece

Now, did the US find a smoking gun? Really? Would it have played any role?

"A confidential record of a meeting between President Bush and Tony Blair before the invasion of Iraq, outlining their intention to go to war without a second United Nations resolution, will be an explosive issue for the official inquiry into the UK's role in toppling Saddam Hussein.

The memo, written on 31 January 2003, almost two months before the invasion and seen by the Observer, confirms that as the two men became increasingly aware UN inspectors would fail to find weapons of mass destruction (WMD) they had to contemplate alternative scenarios that might trigger a second resolution legitimising military action. "
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/jun/21/iraq-inquiry-tony-blair-bush

And:

"Russia, Germany and France, in close coordination, reaffirm that disarming Iraq, in accordance with the relevant resolutions since U.N. Resolution 687, is the common objective of the international community and must be achieved as soon as possible.

There is a debate on how this should be done. (...) Any solution must be inspired by the principles of the United Nations charter as were recently quoted by the secretary general Kofi Annan.

U.N. Resolution 1441, adopted unanimously by the U.N. Security Council, provides a framework of which the potential has not yet been fully exploited.

(...)

There is still an alternative to war. The use of force can only be considered as a last resort. Russia, Germany and France are determined to ensure that everything possible is done to disarm Iraq peacefully." (supported by China, btw)

Now, Erik, who is rewriting history?

(the source to the last quote: http://www.iraqwatch.org/government/Russia/russia-mfa-withfrancegermany-021103.htm)

Regarding this question...in a similar fashion to the ones on the individual oil fields, we may be seeing consortiums led by one company winning the bids, and in that case, the country of the lead company would be the one given credit for earning the rights....wagering on the individual fields has been extended as the bidding process continues

Bush, Rumsfeld and Cheney had a responsibility to consider the chance that Saddam was bluffing. They chose to blatantly neglect that responsibility and even refused to acknowledge any facts which indicated the bluff.

As the world murmurs "Shame on you" The people of America neglect their democratic responsibility to hold them accountable.

More from the glorious "brilliant and successful operation that has kept us all safer", the US "doing it's level best to bring law and order to the region."

UNESCO: US seriously damaged historic Babylon

U.S. troops and contractors in Iraq inflicted serious damage on Babylon, driving heavy machinery over sacred paths, bulldozing hilltops and digging trenches through one of the world's greatest archaeological sites, experts for UNESCO said Thursday.

"The use of Babylon as a military base was a grave encroachment on this internationally known archaeological site," said a report which the U.N. cultural agency presented in Paris.

UNESCO officials stressed that the damage didn't begin with the U.S. military nor fully end after it left. Archaeologists took away some of Babylon's finest treasures in the 19th century, Saddam Hussein embellished the site with his own structures, and looters returned when the Americans handed the site back to the Iraqis 21 months after the March 2003 invasion.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hYZIpEAwUtMB_AcIgjEnAwm6vGigD99B4D9O0

God bless America, and protect her servicemen!