French-kissing the war on Iran

The white man’s oil burden

…Meanwhile, it seems clear that Sarkozy’s game is playing messenger to big (energy) business. He is well known in Paris as the man of the CAC 40 – the French equivalent of the Dow Jones index.

The French rapprochement with the Bush administration – in both Iraq and Iran – could not but revolve around oil, what has been called “the entry of France into Mesopotamia and Persia”. The former US Federal Reserve oracle and the world’s most powerful central planner, Alan Greenspan, finally admitted what even the mineral kingdom already knew: Iraq was invaded because of oil. An attack on Iran, if it happens, will also be because of oil (and gas).

The huge Majnoun oilfield in southeast Iraq, near the Iranian border, the fourth-largest in the country with reserves of more than 12 billion barrels, had been awarded by Saddam Hussein to Elf of France. The US occupation obviously nullified all of Saddam’s contracts.

Then last month US giant Chevron and Total of France signed an agreement to prospect and develop Majnoun together. They already have a partnership regarding the Nahr ben Omar field in southern Iraq (6 billion barrels).

The recent Kouchner trip to Baghdad had a non-humanitarian central theme: oil. But there’s a huge catch: the new oil law – the key Bush “benchmark”, meaning a de facto denationalization of the Iraqi oil industry – has to be approved by the Iraqi Parliament (the debate has already been postponed for months).

In June, Chevron and Total executives met with Iraqi government representatives to discuss their agreement – but there was still no new oil law. And even if there were a law, there would have to be some sort of security on the ground, what with the Sunni Arab resistance attacking oil installations on a daily basis.

Asia Times