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Iraq's Baathist ex-oil chief accuses Kurds
of suspect contract
13.10.2007 |
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October
13, 2007
NICOSIA, -- An Iraqi oil minister under
executed dictator Saddam Hussein accused the
Kurdistan Regional Government of awarding an oil
contract last month to a US company for areas
outside its territorial control.
In an interview published in the latest edition of
the Middle East Economic Survey, Jordan-based Issam
Chalabi said the production-sharing contract signed
with Hunt Oil will cause more friction between the
Baghdad government and the Kurdish authorities.
Baghdad has already criticised the Kurdish
authorities for signing deals with international oil
companies before the federal oil law has been
approved. |
Issam Chalabi Former Minister of Oil-Iraq, baathist
from Saddam's era. |
If confirmed, the latest development would suggest
the KRG may have broader political ambitions for
control of oil and gas in the disputed areas
adjacent to its territory in northern Iraq, said
Chalabi.
The Hunt deal covers four structures in Blocks 6, 7
and 8 - Jabal Kand, Fajir, Nerjis and Ain-Sifni - in
the Duhok area in the northwest of the KRG region,
he said. The Kurdish authorities have released no
specific details of the deal.
Chalabi, who held the Iraqi oil portfolio from 1987
to 1990, said "the first three structures fall
outside the jurisdiction of the KRG, in the Nineveh
governorate."
He told MEES that Hunt's signing with the KRG for
terrain outside its three governorates of Duhok,
Erbil and Sulaimaniyah would have negative legal and
political implications.
"This will be considered a very serious matter from
a political point of view between the central
government and the KRG," he said, adding that this
was especially true since Hunt Oil is a US company.
The former minister said his suspicions about the
Hunt agreement were raised because, in contrast to
other awards made by the KRG, no information about
the blocks concerned or their location was announced
by the Kurdish authorities.
Speaking in general terms about Kurdish contracts
with international oil companies, Chalabi said he
supported the Iraqi government's denouncement of the
contracts as illegal.
"I think they are absolutely right, because even if
you go to the constitution it says in Article 111
that oil and gas are the property of all the Iraqi
people.
"This means agreements ought to be signed by the
only body that represents those Iraqi people, and in
the absence of an oil law that gives particular
authorisation to anyone else, it must be only the
central government that has the right to sign these
contracts," he said.
AFP
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