Iraqi Oil Minister Sets Up Committees in Bid to Fight Corruption

14 June 2005

Iraq’s Oil Minister Ibrahim Bahr al-Uloum has set up three new committees for marketing, contracts and downstream in a bid to fight corruption, as promised when he took over in May, Iraqi sources said.

However, the sources warned that the new formula of running the oil ministry’s affairs by committees could paralyze the workings of the different departments by adding a new layer of bureaucracy.

Just a week after naming a new head for State Oil Marketing Organization (Somo), Bahr al-Uloum has set up an oil marketing committee headed by his adviser, Abdul Sahib Qutob. Other members of the oil marketing committee include Shamkhi Faraj, a former head of Somo who has been appointed recently a director general in the minister’s office for economic and marketing affairs; Ali Muhsin, the inspector general of the ministry; Nabil Abdul Ghafur, the ministry’s director general for internal audit; and Somo Director General Mussab al-Dujayli.

A second five-member committee for refining and gas processing has been set up as well. The committee will be headed by Ahmad al-Brifkani, the downstream adviser at the minister’s office. Other committee members include Deputy Minister Ahmad al-Shamaa, North Gas Co. Director General Riad Abed Ghassab, Ali al-Obeidi from the ministry’s technical department and Akram Stefan Akrawi from the planning department.

The third committee will be in charge of reviewing contracts before awarding and will be headed by Hassan Rufaie, the director general of the audit department at the oil ministry. Its members are experts from the different departments at the ministry. The committee members are Samir Zahroon, Akram Stevan, Ihsan al-Attar, Fahad Jabar, Aziz al-Ghanimi and Muhannad al-Shaikhly.

Iraqi sources told International Oil Daily Monday that Bahr al-Uloum has also appointed Karim Hattab as director general in the minister’s office in charge of upstream. Hattab was until now head of the Missan oil fields department in southern Iraq and his name has been proposed as a possible oil minister during the horse-trading process between the different parties and factions that set up the new Iraqi government following the January parliamentarian elections.

Hattab’s new job will include supervision of both North Oil Co. and South Oil Co., the two upstream companies in charge of oil production in Iraq’s two hydrocarbon-rich regions of Kirkuk and Basrah.

“This is a political appointment. It has nothing to do with the functioning of the ministry or the companies,” one Iraqi source speculated.

On taking over at the helm of the Iraqi oil ministry in May, Bahr al-Uloum declared that one of his objectives besides raising oil exports is to rid the oil sector of corruption, especially in the products distribution network, where smuggling has been rife since the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.

Iraqi sources said the new framework is likely to delay the decision making process at the oil ministry as decisions, no matter how small, will have to await approval by the committees.

Decisions related to the oil sector are also part of the domain of the cabinet as well as the Energy Council, which was set up in May and headed by controversial Deputy Prime Minister Ahmad Chalabi.

By Ruba Husari, London

(Published in International Oil Daily June 14, 2005)

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