What it Means for Iraq To Become The World’s Largest Oil Producer
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12 February 2010. Keith Timimi, EconomyWatch.com.
In 1978, a young scientist by the name of Dr Hussain Al-Shahristani became the Chief Scientific Advisor to the Iraqi Atomic Energy Commission. During a board meeting a year later, the secret police took him away for ‘questioning’.[br]
12 February 2010. Keith Timimi, EconomyWatch.com.
12 February 2010. Keith Timimi, EconomyWatch.com.
In 1978, a young scientist by the name of Dr Hussain Al-Shahristani became the Chief Scientific Advisor to the Iraqi Atomic Energy Commission. During a board meeting a year later, the secret police took him away for ‘questioning’.[br]
12 February 2010. Keith Timimi, EconomyWatch.com.
In 1978, a young scientist by the name of Dr Hussain Al-Shahristani became the Chief Scientific Advisor to the Iraqi Atomic Energy Commission. During a board meeting a year later, the secret police took him away for ‘questioning’.[br]
In this, his first spell at the notorious Abu Ghraib prison, he was hung from his hands and had electric cattle prods stuck in his genitals. Dr Shahristani may well have been tortured, killed and ‘disappeared’ like hundreds thousands of Iraqis in the 1980’s, if it wasn’t for his unique skills.
Because of those skills, he was then taken by Barzan al-Tikriti, Saddam’s half brother and head of the dreaded mukhabaraat (secret police), to help build a nuclear bomb. Dr Shahristani said he did not have the expertise.
He was thrown back into jail, this time to spend ten years in solitary confinement. He later described how an insect flying into his cell was such an exciting event compared to the nothingness he normally experienced, that it may have helped save his sanity.[br]
Saddam had such an iron grip on Iraq in those days that it was hard to imagine any future for the country outside of his control, to be followed by the rule of his even more brutal sons.
It is close to a miracle that Hussain Al-Shahristani, and hundreds of thousands like him, survived their inhuman years-long ordeal with their intelligence and good humour intact.
Can you see how even more improbable it is this man should become the Oil Minister for Iraq? To deny your torturers to their face takes enormous courage. To come back to the scene of the crime, and put yourself back in harm’s way, for the love of your country – that is an act of leadership that is hard to understand, and that certainly has not been acknowledged by the English language press.
How fitting then that, in the face of almost insurmountable odds, Dr Shahristani has resisted pressure from all sides within and outside Iraq to run an oil contract bidding process that has wrung concessions from the oil industry that were thought impossible only a year ago. So much for the mother of all sellouts – thanks to the desire of national governments (such as China and Russia) to lock in long-term oil supplies and geopolitical relations, he has pushed production prices charged by international consortia to historic lows, while preserving national control over the process. The oil auction bidding process is believed to have set new standards for transparency and competitiveness.
It will not be plain sailing. There are still disputes over Kurdish oil control and production, and the all-important regional revenue sharing structures have not been fully settled. Iraqi national stability will depend on these agreements. Oil unions are aggrieved too, complaining of pay cuts and demotions. Protests have been growing, and will continue to grow if foreign companies bring in their own workers and don’t hire and train enough Iraqi workers – as informal reports suggest is the case in the first Chinese-led consortium now working on oil production.
Undeterred, Dr Shahristani has announced his strategic plan. His stated aim is to raise Iraqi oil production levels to 10-12 million barrels per day, which would make it the largest oil producer in the world – more productive even than Saudi Arabia, which produces just under 10 mbd.
Iraq has massive proven reserves of over 115 billion barrels, and possibly holds more oil than even the Saudis do – but getting at it isn’t easy, so it should be emphasised that this is just a stated aim.
Production today is around 2.5 mbd, using infrastructure that has been described as being ‘held together by string’. If local and regional grievances are not solved, attacks on oil infrastructure and industrial action will grow.
Still, a stretch goal does not need to be met for it to be effective. Even if production is raised by half that amount, to 6 – 7 mbd, Iraq would become a major oil producer and desperately ravaged national finances would start to turn around. International oil experts believe that this level of production is achievable.
Having experienced such crippling hardship in the last 30 years, through a combination of Saddam-led Ba’athisation, wars, sanctions, international ‘liberators’ and home-grown bandits, Iraqis have a gallows sense of humour and a clear-eyed view of the fact that daily life may never be as comfortable as it is in, say, Singapore.
But they continue to have hope that even though their children have been both brutalized and traumatized, that their children may live to know a better day. And for that reason, a future with both high oil production and agreed revenue flows to the different centres of power in the country is essential and desirable. Maybe, just maybe, the oil curse can be turned around. If anyone deserves that, surely it is the long suffering citizens of Iraq.
But would the world really permit that to happen? Is a strong, rich and stable Iraq acceptable to the US, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Israel, Turkey and the OPEC community? We will examine that thorny question in our next article in this series.
Keith Timimi
EconomyWatch.com
