Opposition Squabbles

20 December 2002 The US wanted the recent London gathering of Iraqi exiles to be a media event — and that’s exactly what it was. The haggling among the 350-plus opposition members at the four-day meeting, not to mention the outcome, showed the wisdom of Washington’s insistence that all fundamental issues related to a new political system in a post-Saddam Hussein Iraq be avoided. The US had urged the attendees,…

Hussein Al-Shahristani

The Iraqi oil minister talks oil with Ruba Husari:

Q. You launched your first licensing round Jun. 30 with an ambitious schedule to award contracts by June 2009. In view of Iraq’s problems, is this timetable realistic?

HS: It is ambitious, but we are talking about producing fields, where production profiles and other data are already available, and most of the international companies that intend to bid for those fields have a lot of data, so the time required to familiarize themselves is much shorter than if we were talking about non-developed fields. We think one year is enough. We gave the companies six months to prepare their bids and we told them to start preparing from now. Iraq lost big investment opportunities in the last five years as a result of the security situation and political differences. We cannot afford to waste any more time, and we aim to complete this process within a year. We will also launch a second licensing round before the first one is completed. Once the data packages are out in September and while companies prepare their bids, which are due in March 2009, we will have time to prepare for the launch of the second round.