BBC: BushCo planned for Iraq's oil before 9/11

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Wed, 15 Mar 2006 17:36:36 -0800 (PST)

BBC:BushCo planned for Iraq's oil before 9/11

 

 

 

 

BBC:BushCo planned for Iraq's oil before 9/11

 

Secret US plans for Iraq's oil

 

 

By Greg Palast

Reporting for Newsnight

 

 

The Bush administration made plans for war and for

Iraq's oil before the 9/11 attacks, sparking a policy

battle between neo-cons and Big Oil, BBC's Newsnight

has revealed.

 

 

Two years ago today - when President George Bush

announced US, British and Allied forces would begin to

bomb Baghdad - protesters claimed the US had a secret

plan for Iraq's oil once Saddam had been conquered.

In fact there were two conflicting plans, setting off

a hidden policy war between neo-conservatives at the

Pentagon, on one side, versus a combination of " Big

Oil " executives and US State Department " pragmatists " .

 

 

" Big Oil " appears to have won. The latest plan,

obtained by Newsnight from the US State Department

was, we learned, drafted with the help of American oil

industry consultants.

 

Insiders told Newsnight that planning began " within

weeks " of Bush's first taking office in 2001, long

before the September 11th attack on the US.

 

 

We saw an increase in the bombing of oil facilities

and pipelines [in Iraq] built on the premise that

privatisation is coming

 

Mr Falah Aljibury

 

An Iraqi-born oil industry consultant, Falah Aljibury,

says he took part in the secret meetings in

California, Washington and the Middle East. He

described a State Department plan for a forced coup

d'etat.

Mr Aljibury himself told Newsnight that he interviewed

potential successors to Saddam Hussein on behalf of

the Bush administration.

 

Secret sell-off plan

 

The industry-favoured plan was pushed aside by a

secret plan, drafted just before the invasion in 2003,

which called for the sell-off of all of Iraq's oil

fields. The new plan was crafted by neo-conservatives

intent on using Iraq's oil to destroy the Opec cartel

through massive increases in production above Opec

quotas.

 

 

The sell-off was given the green light in a secret

meeting in London headed by Fadhil Chalabi shortly

after the US entered Baghdad, according to Robert

Ebel.

Mr Ebel, a former Energy and CIA oil analyst, now a

fellow at the Center for Strategic and International

Studies in Washington, told Newsnight he flew to the

London meeting at the request of the State Department.

 

 

Mr Aljibury, once Ronald Reagan's " back-channel " to

Saddam, claims that plans to sell off Iraq's oil,

pushed by the US-installed Governing Council in 2003,

helped instigate the insurgency and attacks on US and

British occupying forces.

 

" Insurgents used this, saying, 'Look, you're losing

your country, you're losing your resources to a bunch

of wealthy billionaires who want to take you over and

make your life miserable,' " said Mr Aljibury from his

home near San Francisco.

 

" We saw an increase in the bombing of oil facilities,

pipelines, built on the premise that privatisation is

coming. "

 

Privatisation blocked by industry

 

Philip Carroll, the former CEO of Shell Oil USA who

took control of Iraq's oil production for the US

Government a month after the invasion, stalled the

sell-off scheme.

 

Mr Carroll told us he made it clear to Paul Bremer,

the US occupation chief who arrived in Iraq in May

2003, that: " There was to be no privatisation of Iraqi

oil resources or facilities while I was involved. "

 

 

Ariel Cohen, of the neo-conservative Heritage

Foundation, told Newsnight that an opportunity had

been missed to privatise Iraq's oil fields.

He advocated the plan as a means to help the US defeat

Opec, and said America should have gone ahead with

what he called a " no-brainer " decision.

 

Mr Carroll hit back, telling Newsnight, " I would agree

with that statement. To privatize would be a

no-brainer. It would only be thought about by someone

with no brain. "

 

New plans, obtained from the State Department by

Newsnight and Harper's Magazine under the US Freedom

of Information Act, called for creation of a

state-owned oil company favoured by the US oil

industry. It was completed in January 2004 under the

guidance of Amy Jaffe of the James Baker Institute in

Texas.

 

Formerly US Secretary of State, Baker is now an

attorney representing Exxon-Mobil and the Saudi

Arabian government.

 

View segments of Iraq oil plans at www.GregPalast.com

 

Questioned by Newsnight, Ms Jaffe said the oil

industry prefers state control of Iraq's oil over a

sell-off because it fears a repeat of Russia's energy

privatisation. In the wake of the collapse of the

Soviet Union, US oil companies were barred from

bidding for the reserves.

 

Ms Jaffe says US oil companies are not warm to any

plan that would undermine Opec and the current high

oil price: " I'm not sure that if I'm the chair of an

American company, and you put me on a lie detector

test, I would say high oil prices are bad for me or my

company. "

 

The former Shell oil boss agrees. In Houston, he told

Newsnight: " Many neo conservatives are people who have

certain ideological beliefs about markets, about

democracy, about this, that and the other.

International oil companies, without exception, are

very pragmatic commercial organizations. They don't

have a theology. "

 

A State Department spokesman told Newsnight they

intended " to provide all possibilities to the Oil

Ministry of Iraq and advocate none " .

 

Greg Palast's film - the result of a joint

investigation by Newsnight and Harper's Magazine -

will be broadcast on Thursday, 17 March, 2005.

 

Newsnight is broadcast every weekday at 10.30pm on BBC

Two in the UK.

 

 

http://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/mpapps/pagetools/print/news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/\

newsnight/4354269.stm