Though Iraq's future is hazy, energy companies have begun to weigh the roles they might play in the revival of the country's huge but dilapidated oil industry. According to a report by Deutsche Bank, oil field services companies like Schlumberger Ltd. and the Halliburton Corporation could be the early winners, but the prospects for oil companies themselves are less clear.
"We expect to see oil service contracts to rehabilitate old fields, but anticipate long-drawn-out negotiations on new fields," the report says.
Industry experts and the State Department have said that oil revenues will probably finance the rebuilding of Iraq, which has reserves second only to Saudi Arabia's. That would make repair of the industry a priority either for a new regime or for Saddam Hussein's government, if it satisfies United Nations weapons inspectors and the sanctions on Iraq end.
On a related note, read this article about the NeoCons' wet dream successor to Hussein.
But the untold riches that lie beneath the soil of Iraq are a powerful lure for multinational oil companies. "I would say that especially the U.S. oil companies ... look forward to the idea that Iraq will be open for business," says an executive from one of the world's largest oil companies, adding that the companies are trying hard not to be noticed.
"We don't have a stake in Iraq now," says another oil industry executive. "One of the frustrations that U.S. oil companies have is that the Russians, the French and the Chinese already have existing relations with Iraq. And the question is: How much of that will be sanctified by the people who succeed Saddam?"
The INC and its backers make no bones about the fact that the American forces gathering to attack Iraq will be liberating Iraq's oil. Unable to restrain himself, Chalabi blurted to The Washington Post that the INC intends to reward its American friends. "American companies will have a big shot at Iraqi oil," he proclaimed.
Meanwhile, economists allied with the INC -- including strategists at the Heritage Foundation, the AEI and JINSA -- are abuzz with plans to "denationalize" the Iraqi oil industry and then distribute it to Western, mostly American, companies. In late September, in "The Future of a Post-Saddam Iraq: A Blueprint for American Involvement," the Heritage Foundation's Ariel Cohen put forward a nearly complete scheme for the privatization of Iraq's oil, creating three separate companies for southern Iraq, the region around Baghdad and the Kirkuk fields in northern Iraq, with additional companies to operate pipelines and refineries and to develop Iraq's natural gas. In an interview, Cohen warned that France, Russia and China might find that their existing oil contracts with Iraq won't be honored by the INC. "It will be up to the next government of Iraq to examine the legal validity of the deals signed by the Saddam regime," says Cohen. "From a realpolitik point of view, these governments should try to get in early with the Iraqi National Congress and abandon Saddam. The window of opportunity is closing."