Bush Ties To Corrupt Hunt Oil Contract in Iraq

Panel Questions State Dept. Role in Iraq Oil Deal

By JAMES GLANZ and RICHARD A. OPPEL Jr.

Bush administration officials knew that a Texas oil company with close ties to President Bush was planning to sign an oil deal with the regional Kurdistan government that ran counter to American policy and undercut Iraq’s central government, a Congressional committee has concluded.

The conclusions were based on e-mail messages and other documents that the committee released Wednesday.

United States policy is to warn companies that they incur risks in signing contracts until Iraq passes an oil law and to strengthen Iraq’s central government. The Kurdistan deal, by ceding responsibility for writing contracts directly to a regional government, infuriated Iraqi officials. But State Department officials did nothing to discourage the deal and in some cases appeared to welcome it, the documents show.

The company, Hunt Oil of Dallas, signed the deal with Kurdistan’s semiautonomous government last September. Its chief executive, Ray L. Hunt, a close political ally of President Bush, briefed an advisory board to Mr. Bush on his contacts with Kurdish officials before the deal was signed.

In an e-mail message released by the Congressional committee, a State Department official in Washington, briefed by a colleague about the impending deal with the Kurdistan Regional Government, wrote: “Many thanks for the heads up; getting an American company to sign a deal with the K.R.G. will make big news back here. Please keep us posted.”

The release of the documents comes as the administration is defending help that United States officials provided in drawing up a separate set of no-bid contracts, still pending, between Iraq’s Oil Ministry in Baghdad and five major Western oil companies to provide services at other Iraqi oil fields.

In the no-bid contracts, the administration said it had provided what it called purely technical help writing the contracts. The United States played no role in choosing the companies, the administration has said.

Disclosure of those contracts has provided substantial fuel to critics of the Iraq war, both in the United States and abroad, who contend that the enormous Iraqi oil reserves were a motivation for the American-led invasion — an assertion the administration has repeatedly denied.

Iraq’s oil minister, Hussain al-Shahristani, has condemned the Kurdistan deal as illegal because it was not approved by Iraq’s central government and was struck without an oil law, which has still not been passed.

After the deal was signed last year, a senior State Department official in Baghdad criticized it, saying, “We believe these contracts have needlessly elevated tensions between the K.R.G. and the national government of Iraq.”

The State Department said Wednesday that it had discouraged the deal. Hunt officials declined to comment, and Kurdish government officials said there was no impropriety.

In a letter to the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, whose chairman is Representative Henry A. Waxman, Democrat of California, a State Department official wrote that the department had strongly discouraged Hunt from signing the deal until an oil law had been passed.

The State Department told Hunt that “we continue to advise all companies that they incur significant political and legal risk by signing contracts” before then, wrote Jeffrey T. Bergner, an assistant secretary for legislative affairs at the department, in one of the documents made public on Wednesday.

But in a letter to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Mr. Waxman wrote that the documents his committee had collected “tell a different story about the role of administration officials.” In letters obtained by the committee, Mr. Hunt informed the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, of which he was a member, last July and August that he was pursuing serious business interests in Kurdistan.

“We were approached a month ago by representatives of a private group in Kurdistan as to the possibility of our becoming interested in that region,” Mr. Hunt wrote to the board last July 12.:

“We had one team of geoscientists travel to Kurdistan several weeks ago and we were encouraged by what we saw.”

In August 2007, Mr. Hunt informed State Department officials directly of his intentions in Kurdistan, and on Sept. 5, three days before the deal was signed, a flurry of e-mail messages among Hunt and State Department officials make clear that the department was aware of what was in the works.

In a message to a colleague with the subject line “Hunt Oil to Sign Contract With K.R.G.,” one State Department official gives a highly detailed summary of the agreement. Mr. Hunt, the official wrote, “is expecting to sign an exploration contract with the K.R.G. for a field located in the Shakkan district, an area under K.R.G. control (inside the Green Line) but technically in Nineveh Governorate.”

“Hunt would be the first U.S. company to sign such a deal,” the official wrote, suggesting that the news should be rushed onto the State Department’s internal distribution network as quickly as possible.

Despite those exchanges, a State Department official said Wednesday that the company had in fact been discouraged from completing its deal.

“All companies, including Hunt Oil, which have spoken with the United States government about investing in Iraq’s oil sector, have and will continue to be given the same advice,” John Fleming, an Iraq press officer in the State Department’s Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, wrote Wednesday in an e-mailed response to questions. “We advise companies that they incur significant political and legal risk by signing any contracts with any party before a national law is passed by the Iraqi Parliament.”

Another State Department official, who asked to remain anonymous, expressed frustration, saying that a local State Department official in Erbil, the Kurdish provincial capital, who was the head of a so-called Regional Reconstruction Team, tried to dissuade Hunt officials from making the deal.

But no notes were taken at that meeting, the official said, and Hunt representatives later gave a conflicting account of what had been said.

“I have talked to the R.R.T. team leader personally, and he sticks by his story and they stick by theirs,” the State Department official said.

Jeanne L. Phillips, a senior vice president for corporate affairs and international relations at Hunt Oil whose correspondence appears at certain points in the documents released Wednesday, said that because Mr. Waxman’s letter was not addressed directly to the company, she could not comment on it.

“As a matter of company policy, Hunt Oil Company does not comment on correspondence between third parties,” Ms. Phillips wrote in an e-mail message.

An official in the Kurdistan Regional Government reached late Wednesday who asked not to be named said that the government had written some 22 contracts to date.

“Anyone can have a contract with the K.R.G., but it must be accepted and suitable according to assessment by our experts,” the official said. “Hunt is a good company and never had its contracts with us illegally or improperly.”

The documents released by Mr. Waxman also lay bare what has become a serious dispute between the company and the State Department over what was said between them before the deal last year.

For example, a senior Hunt official said he was told by State Department officials during a meeting on June 15, 2007, that the United States government did not object to deals with the Kurdish regional government.

“I specifically asked if the U.S.G. had a policy toward companies entering contracts with the K.R.G.,” the Hunt official, David McDonald, wrote in an e-mail message to a colleague last Sept. 28. The State Department officials, Mr. McDonald wrote, replied that there was no policy, neither for nor against.

His message concluded: “There was no communication to me or in my presence made by the nine State Department officials with whom I met prior to 8 September that Hunt should not pursue our course of action leading to a contract. In fact, there was ample opportunity to do so, but it did not happen.”

The encouragement by State Department officials did not end with the signing of the contract on Sept. 8, the documents suggest. Five days later, a State Department official in the southern city of Basra wrote to Ms. Phillips, “I read and heard about with interest your deal with the regional Kurdish government.”

“I don’t know if you are aware of another opportunity,” the official wrote, mentioning an enormous port project and a natural gas project in the south. After a few more lines, the official concluded, “This seems like it would be a good opportunity for Hunt.”

James Glanz reported from New York, and Richard A. Oppel Jr. from Baghdad. Andrew E. Kramer contributed reporting from Moscow, Mudhafer al-Husaini from Baghdad and an Iraqi employee of The New York Times from Kurdistan.

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)


The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.

Inquiry urged on Hunt Oil contract in Iraq

Democrats say Bush ties may have led to Iraq oil contract

10:48 PM CDT on Monday, October 15, 2007

By DAVE MICHAELS / The Dallas Morning News
dmichaels@dallasnews.com

WASHINGTON – Democratic lawmakers moved Monday toward investigating Hunt Oil's oil exploration contract in Iraq, saying the company's ties to President Bush raised questions about whether it had insider information that helped it reach the deal.

U.S. Rep. Henry Waxman, chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, and U.S. Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, asked Hunt to turn over all Iraq-related communication with the U.S. government by Nov. 2.

The lawmakers also demanded that Ray Hunt, Hunt Oil's chief executive, submit copies of information he may have received about Iraq as a member of Mr. Bush's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board.

A Hunt spokeswoman said the company would cooperate with the request for "certain limited information."

Spokeswoman Jeanne Phillips said the company's judgment to explore for oil in the Kurdish region of Iraq was made without U.S. government advice.

"As we have stated before, our policy as a company is to act independently when determining where to explore for oil and gas around the world," Ms. Phillips said in a prepared statement.

Mr. Hunt, 64, has not talked about his service on the intelligence board, which meets about six times a year. Its members, all presidential appointees, have security clearances, and much of their work is classified.

Former board members and intelligence experts said its members don't often deal with specific intelligence.

Instead, they focus on broader concerns, such as whether one agency is cooperating with another or how a training program is working.

"Their job is to advise the president about the efficiency of the intelligence systems and where things need to be changed," said Arthur S. Hulnick, a CIA veteran who is now an associate professor of international relations at Boston University.

"It is more management than substantive."

That said, members must study intelligence-gathering efforts if they are expected to judge how the system works, Mr. Hulnick said.

"They clearly have to see it – things like estimates and daily reports, finished intelligence and analyzed intelligence," he said.

Although Mr. Waxman's committee has subpoena power, the lawmakers did not indicate whether they would compel Hunt officials to testify.

"We are in the information-gathering stage," said Natalie Laber, a spokeswoman for Mr. Kucinich. "Before we hold hearings, we gather information."

Mr. Waxman, D-Calif., has held a series of contentious, Iraq-related hearings in recent months, including one at which Democrats grilled Blackwater, the State Department's private security contractor. Members also investigated corruption in the Iraqi government.

Last month, Mr. Bush said he was concerned about Hunt's deal if it jeopardized Iraq's ability to pass a national oil-sharing law. In their letter to Hunt, Mr. Waxman and Mr. Kucinich asserted that Hunt's deal "may have undermined U.S. national policy of working toward the passage of an oil revenue sharing plan."

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's oil minister has called Hunt's deal illegal. Congressional Democrats have jumped into the fray, saying Hunt Oil signed its deal with the Kurdistan Regional Government because it has insider information about the future of Iraq's national oil law.

"Ray Hunt is in a unique position to know what is happening in Iraq," said Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass., chairman of the Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming.

Ms. Phillips said Hunt Oil's decision to enter Iraq was based only on information that "was in the public domain."

Hunt Oil and the Kurdistan Regional Government have said that their deal complies with the national constitution and noted that the agreement calls for sharing revenue with other regions of Iraq. They said Mr. Hunt's political relationships were irrelevant to the firm's decision to explore in Iraq.

"The outcome of the deliberations for the national hydrocarbons law will not affect this agreement one way or another," Qubad Talabani, Washington representative of the Kurdistan Regional Government, said recently.

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)


The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.

Our Military and Economic Sacrifice For Control Of Oil

Oil and Betrayal in Iraq,

By George Lakoff

Submitted by BuzzFlash on Wed, 09/19/2007 - 10:40pm. Guest Contribution

George Lakoff of the The Rockridge Institute examines what Alan Greenspan's admission that "the Iraq war is largely about oil" means for America's troops and for the people of Iraq:

Alan Greenspan should know. It was oil all along. The former head of the Federal Reserve writes in his memoir, The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World, "I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil." Greenspan even advised Bush that "taking Saddam Hussein out was essential" to protect oil supplies.

Yes, we suspected it. In a deep sense, many of us knew it, just as those in Washington did. But now it's in our face. Greenspan put the mother of all facts in front of our noses, and we can no longer be in denial. The US invaded Iraq for the oil.

Think about what it means for our troops and for the people of Iraq. Our troops were told, and believed because they trusted their president, that they were in Iraq to protect America, to protect their families, their homes, their friends and neighbors, our democracy. But they were betrayed. Those troops fought and died and were maimed and had their marriages break up for oil company profits. An utter betrayal of our men and women in uniform and their families, a betrayal of their sacrifices, day after day, month after month, year and year — and for some, forever! Children growing up fatherless or motherless. Men and women without legs or arms or faces — for oil company profits.

And hundreds of thousands of Iraqis killed, more maimed, and millions made refugees. For oil profits.

And what profits they are! Take a look at the study of Iraqi oil contracts by Global Policy Forum, a consultant to the United Nations Security Council. Or read this editorial from The Daily Times in Pakistan.

The contracts that the Bush administration has been pushing the Iraqi government to accept are not just about the distribution of oil among the Sunnis, Shiites, and Kurds. The contracts call for 30-year exclusive rights for British and American oil companies, rights that cannot be revoked by future Iraqi governments. They are called "production sharing agreements" (or "PSA's") — a legalistic code word. The Iraqi government would technically own the oil, but could not control it; only the companies could do that. ExxonMobil and others would invest in developing the infrastructure for the oil (drilling, oil rigs, refining) and would get 75% of the "cost oil" profits, until they got their investment back. After that, they would own the infrastructure (paid for by oil profits), and then get 20% of oil profits after that (twice the usual rate). The profits are estimated to be in the hundreds of billions of dollars. And the Iraqi people would have no democratic control over their own major resource. No other Middle East country has such an arrangement.

Incidentally, polls show the Iraqi people overwhelmingly against "privatization", but "production sharing agreements" were devised so they are technically not "privatization," since the government would still own the oil but not control it. The ruse is there so that the government can claim it is not privatizing.

But none of this will work without military protection for the oil companies. That is what would keep us there indefinitely. The name for this is our "vital interests."

Greenspan's revelation and the contracts need to be discussed openly. The question must be asked, "Is our military there for the sake of oil?"

I have been struck by the use of the word "victory" by the right wing, especially by its propaganda arm, Freedom's Watch. Usually, "victory" is used in reference to a war between countries over territory, where there is a definable enemy. That is not the case in Iraq, where we have for four years had an occupation, not a "war," and there has been no clear enemy. We have mostly been fighting Iraqis we were supposed to be rescuing. "Victory" makes no sense for such an occupation. And even Petraeus has said that only a political, not a military, settlement is possible. In what sense can keeping troops there for 9 or 10 years or longer, as Petraeus has suggested, be a "victory"?

What is most frightening is that they may mean what they say, that they may have a concept of "victory" that makes sense to them but not to the rest of the country. If the goal of the invasion and occupation of Iraq has been to guarantee access to Iraqi oil for the next 30 years, then any result guaranteeing oil profits for American oil companies would count as "victory." Suppose the present killing and chaos were to continue, forcing us to keep our troops there indefinitely, but allowing the oil companies to prosper under our protection. That would be a "victory." Or if the Iraqi army and police force were to develop in a few years and keep order there protecting American investments and workers, that too would be "victory." If the country broke up into three distinct states or autonomous governments, that too would be "victory" as long as oil profits were guaranteed and Americans in the oil industry protected. And it doesn't matter if a Republican president keeps the troops there or a Democratic president does. It is still an oil company "victory" — and a victory for Bush.

Indeed, Kurdistan's PSA contract last week with Hunt Oil suggests the latter form of "victory." As Paul Krugman observed in the New York Times on September 14, "the chief executive and president of Hunt Oil, is a close political ally of Mr. Bush. More than that, Mr. Hunt is a member of the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, a key oversight body." Hunt Oil seems to have had the first taste of "victory."

If that is "victory," what is "defeat" and who is being "defeated?" The troops who would have to stay to protect the oil investments would, person by person, suffer defeat — a defeat of the spirit and, for too many, of the body. And most of America would suffer a defeat, especially our taxpayers who have paid a trillion dollars that could have gone for health care for all, for excellent schools and college educations, for rebuilding Louisiana and Mississippi, for shoring up our infrastructure and bridges, and for protecting our environment. Victory for the oil companies, defeat for most of America.

Is Greenspan right? Is this what "victory" could possibly mean? I do not want to even think that the answers might be "yes." The thought itself is too disgusting. But Greenspan has put the questions before us, and we have a duty to pursue the answers. Because, if the answer is even half "yes," then the troops and most Americans have been, and continue to be, betrayed beyond measure.

Perhaps the most honest and straightforward way to pursue such answers would be for Congress to frame the issue directly in terms of oil, as Greenspan did. Here's a way to do it: The Constitution gives Congress authority over military matters through its power to fund continued military action. Without such funding, the troops cannot continue. Suppose Congress were to pass a bill saying that no funding would be forthcoming for military action in Iraq unless the Iraqi government drops all provisions for PSA's — production sharing agreements — in its legislation. This would actually give the Iraqi government sovereignty over its oil indefinitely and take oil control away from Western oil companies. Even proposing such a bill seriously would have two effects: To raise the constitutional issue: the president has been overriding the constitution. And it would bring the oil issue front and center, so we can all see if "victory" is really about oil interests.

Suppose Greenspan is right, that oil was a primary factor in the Iraq invasion, that "victory" means victory for oil companies, and that "sacrifice" means sacrifice for the American oil industry. While I held the very possibility that this might be true, I clicked on the following website. Perhaps you will feel as I felt.

(In accordance with Title 17 .S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)


The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.