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Iraq leaders agree draft oil law -oil
ministry
17.1.2007
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BAGHDAD, January
17, -- Iraq's Oil Committee has agreed a final draft
of an Oil Law that sets rules for sharing revenues
and boosting output and aims to bring in billions of
dollars of foreign investment, an Oil Ministry
spokesman said on Wednesday.
The draft, drawn up senior national and regional
leaders, calls for a federal committee headed by the
prime minister to oversee all future contracts. It
will have the power to review existing deals signed
under Saddam Hussein or by the Kurdish regional
government, spokesman Asim Jihad said.
Passing an oil law to help settle potentially
explosive disputes among Iraq's ethnic and sectarian
communities over the division of the world's third
biggest known crude oil reserves has been a key
demand of the United States in providing further
military support to the national unity government.
The negotiating team, headed by Deputy Prime
Minister Barham Salih, had finalised the draft late
on Tuesday, Jihad said, and the bill would go to the
full cabinet next week for approval. After that it
will go to parliament.
Officials hope that the broad base of the
negotiating team means it will pass easily.
The final draft was in line with earlier versions
described last month after a previous round of
talks. A national oil company would be set up to
develop production and exports and the law is
intended to ensure balanced development of the oil
industry across Iraq's regions, Jihad said.
It establishes a mechanism for centralising oil
revenues and distributing them to the various
regions.
The division of oil is a key factor in communal
tensions in Iraq.
The southern oil fields around Basra lie in
territory controlled by competing factions of the
dominant Shi'ite Islamist political forces, some of
whom are close to Iran.
The northern fields lie on the edge of Iraqi
Kurdistan around the city of Kirkuk.
Kurds want to annexe the city as their regional
capital and ethnic Arabs and Turkmen accuse the
Kurdish militants of ethnic cleansing before a
referendum on the city's future which, under the
constitution, is due this year.
The Sunni Arab minority dominant under ousted
president Saddam Hussein is concentrated in Baghdad
and regions immediately to the north and west where
there are few known hydrocarbon reserves -- though
some potential future finds.
Sunnis have been particularly insistent that the
central government in Baghdad control the oil
industry, despite a new, U.S.-sponsored
constitution, opposed by most Sunnis, which gives
newly created federal regions some powers over oil
and gas.
Washington and the government of Shi'ite Prime
Minister Nuri al-Maliki are mounting a major
security crackdown in the divided capital Baghdad
over the coming months to avert an all-out civil war
there between Sunni insurgents and Shi'ite militias.
Reuters
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