Draft oil law to Cabinet; Oil, gas found in Sunni area

"A draft version of the long-awaited law that would govern the development of Iraqi oil fields and the distribution of oil revenues has been submitted to Iraq’s cabinet, the first step toward approving the legislation, two members of a senior negotiating committee said this weekend.
. . . If the cabinet approves the draft law, it would then be sent to Parliament for ratification. Parliament for the most part automatically passes laws that have been approved by leaders of the main political parties, which run along ethnic and sectarian lines." [1]

"Huge petroleum deposits have long been known in Iraq’s Kurdish north and Shiite south. But now, Iraq has substantially increased its estimates of the amount of oil and natural gas in deposits on Sunni lands after quietly paying foreign oil companies tens of millions of dollars over the past two years to re-examine old seismic data across the country and retrain Iraqi petroleum engineers.
The development is likely to have significant political effects: the lack of natural resources in the central and western regions where Sunnis hold sway has fed their disenchantment with the nation they once ruled. And it has driven their insistence on a strong central government, one that would collect oil revenues and spread them equitably among the country’s factions, rather than any division of the country along sectarian regional boundaries." [2]

sources
[1] Glanz, James. (The New York Times). Draft Law on Oil Money Moves to Iraqi Cabinet. February 19, 2007.
[2] Glanz, James. (The New York Times). Iraqi Sunni Lands Show New Oil and Gas Promise. February 19, 2007.

posted: tuesday, february 20, 2007, 6:03 PM ET

tags: iraq oil sunni