International Journal of Contemporary Iraqi Studies - Volume 5, Issue 1, 2011

Since 2003 the development of the Iraqi petroleum sector has witnessed unprecedented openness for foreign direct investment (FDI). This includes, to one degree or another, all petroleum sub-sectors: upstream (exploration, development and production), midstream (storage, pipeline and export outlets) and downstream (refining and gas processing). Such openness was encouraged by certain provisions and orientations of the current 2005 Constitution, enacted by executive procedures and legal frameworks and governed by contracts and agreements. To develop the upstream sub-sector Iraq pursued a big-push strategy, and within a relatively short period of time stretching between November 2008 and May 2010 the Ministry of Oil (MoO) signed twelve long-term technical service contracts (LTTSCs) with a variety of international oil companies (IOCs) aimed at increasing current production capacity by many folds. However, upstream development, and indeed petroleum policy at large, faces broad sets of formidable constraints, among which are the most effective determinants that could have far-reaching impacts. These include structural, geopolitical, international and internal factors. But most fundamentally, the majority of the prominent oil analysts, professionals and industry experts question the achievability, sustainability and indeed the desirability of the proposed expansion of Iraq's production capacity. While recognizing Iraq's needs to finance the reconstruction of its shattered economy as significant, justifiable and above all legitimate, nevertheless, this article argues that the adopted big-push strategy could very well turn out to be damaging, costly and contrary to Iraqi interests and national security.

The first and second oil licensing deals could raise production capacity, in Iraq, to somewhere between 9.4 and 12.3 million barrels per day (mbd) by 2020; up from 2.5 mbd in 2009. Revenues from proportionate oil (and gas) exports will surpass budgetary and balance of payments requirements. Consequently, foreign exchange and fiscal surplus would accumulate. Setting the production/exports level according to economic needs will reduce the tendency for excessive production and budgetary surplus. After 2040, however, oil production will start to decline. Exports will decline faster as a result of growing domestic consumption. Uncertainty about long-term oil use and fiscal deficits, after 2040, necessitate higher oil production and budgetary surplus before 2040. Through an oil fund, accumulated surplus can be managed efficiently and transparently. Its investments provide a source of income. It can also contribute to the smoothing out of annual public expenditures. Hence, it is a saving/stabilization fund. Therefore, the existence and sound management of an oil (saving/stabilization) fund are required for the preservation of sustainable public expenditures and maintenance of standards of living. Furthermore, social reconciliation and effective institutions could pave the way to reduce rentierism and enhance governance by agreeing on ways and means to rationally share and use oil income, including that from saving/stabilization fund.

The article addresses the interplay between oil policy and constitutional law in Iraq. Its central focus is the relations that the constitution allocates to Kurdistan authorities and the federal government. Through this prism it provides an account of the prospects for the Iraqi oil industry. This includes a discrete exposition of the production sharing and service contracts that have been concluded between the international oil companies and the Kurdistan authorities and the federal government. Both federal and Kurdistan authorities use interpretations of legal texts, both contracts and constitutions, to pursue their own political and economic projects. Law in this case is politics by another means.

The essay questions whether it was necessary for Iraq to award fifteen giant and super-giant oil fields to International Oil Companies (IOCs) all at once and asks whether it would have been better for Iraq to award these contracts gradually, considering that the country is suffering from a fragile political system, a corrupt and inefficient civil service and a lack of security.

This article analyses the production of visual and textual representations of the imprisonment of Muslim rulers. The first case study deals with the representations of Saddam Hussein in English language media (principally in Britain and the United States) following his capture on 13 December 2003. The second addresses the texts, woodcuts and theatrical performances of the late fifteenth to the eighteenth century dealing with the captivity of the Ottoman Sultan Bayezid I Yildirim (d. 1403) by Temür (Tamerlane, d. 1405) following the battle of Ankara in 1402. The comparison of the treatment of these two events in both text and image reveals the presence of common strategies including the employment of historical or literary references and the imagining of forms of violent and/or sexualized humiliation.

When Anglo-American forces invaded Iraq in 2003, the country's cultural property was left unprotected. This article argues that the United States and its coalition partners were unwilling to prevent the destruction and looting of Iraqi cultural property and that this was due to not only ignorance and carelessness but also the additional costs associated with protecting the items and perhaps even the intention for these relics to be destroyed. One must also look to the inaction of the United Nations (UN), specifically the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), that could have prevented much of the post-invasion destruction and looting of these cultural relics.