The French oil connection

THE FRENCH WAR FOR OIL
By KENNETH R. TIMMERMAN
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March 16, 2004 -- MANY Americans are convinced even today that the war in
Iraq was all about oil. And they're right - but oil was the key for French
President Jacques Chirac, not for the United States.
In documents I obtained during an investigation of the French relationship
to Saddam Hussein, the French interest in maintaining Saddam Hussein in
power was spelled out in excruciating detail. The price tag: close to $100
billion. That was what French oil companies stood to profit in the first
seven years of their exclusive oil arrangements - had Saddam remained in
power.

The French claimed their opposition to the U.S.-led war to oust Saddam
Hussein was all about policy. The editor of the Paris daily Le Monde,
Jean-Marie Colombani, just resuscitated those arguments in an editorial that
singled out George W. Bush as "a threat to the very foundation of the
historical alliance between the U.S. and Europe," and called fervently for
the election of John F. Kerry. (I guess that F now stands for France.)

But Colombani, whose paper's coverage of the war in Iraq was noteworthy for
its wanton disregard for the truth, had not a word to say about his
country's war for oil. Indeed, the secret deals the French state-owned oil
companies negotiated in the 1990s with Saddam Hussein went widely unreported
in France.

Almost as soon as the guns went silent after the first Gulf war in 1991,
French oil giants Total SA and Elf Aquitaine - who have now merged and
expanded to become TotalFinaElf - sought a competitive advantage over their
rivals in Iraq by negotiating exclusive production-sharing contracts with
Saddam's regime that were intended to give them a stranglehold on Iraq's
future oil production for decades to come.

The first of two massive deals was announced in June 1994 by then-Iraqi Oil
Minister Safa al-Habobi - a well-known figure whose name had surfaced in
numerous procurement schemes in the 1980s in association with the Ministry
of Industry and Military Industrialization, which supervised Saddam's
chemical, biological, missile and nuclear-weapons programs.

Speaking in Vienna, al-Habobi confirmed that his government was awarding
Total SA rights to the future production of the Nahr Umar oil field in
southern Iraq, and that Elf was well-placed to be awarded similar terms in
the Majnoon oil fields on the border with Iran.



Those two deals, which I detail in "The French Betrayal of America," would
have been worth an estimated $100 billion over a seven-year period - but
were conditioned on the lifting of U.N. sanctions on Iraq. Simply put,
analyst Gerald Hillman told me, the French were saying: "We will help you
get the sanctions lifted, and when we do that, you give us this."

The Total contract, a copy of which I obtained, was "very one-sided," says
Hillman. (Hillman, a political economist and a managing partner at Trireme
Investments in New York, did a detailed analysis of the contract.) An
ordinary production agreement typically grants the foreign partner a maximum
of 50 percent of the gross proceeds of the oil produced at the field they
develop. But this deal gave Total 75 percent of the total production. "This
is highly unusual," he said. Indeed, it was extortion.

But Saddam willingly agreed: He saw the Total deal, and a similar one with
Elf, as the price he had to pay to secure French political support at the
United Nations.

Much has been written in recent weeks about the corruption of the U.N.
Oil-for-Food program. Documents uncovered in Iraq's oil ministry and
published by the Baghdad daily al Mada list several cronies of French
President Chirac among those who had received special oil allocations as a
political payoff from Saddam.

But the amounts attributed to these individuals - in the tens of millions of
barrels, on which they stood to earn between 25 to 40 cents per barrel -
pale in comparison to the $100 billion payoff orchestrated by Chirac and
Saddam.

No, oil wasn't the only reason France opposed the United States at the
United Nations in the lead-up to the war. The megalomania of Foreign
Minister Dominique de Villepin (who lied to Secretary of State Colin Powell
repeatedly and later boasted about it to visiting U.S. congressional
delegations) certainly entered into the mix. So did French pride, wounded at
the realization that France is no longer the great power it once was.

But the French did not merely disagree with the United States over Iraq, as
did a certain number of our allies: They actively sought to rally world
leaders and public opinion to treat the United States - not Saddam Hussein -
as the enemy.

The enormous difference between those two positions - legitimate dissent and
active subversion of America's right to self-defense - is why America is
right to treat France as a former ally. Under Chirac's stewardship, France
has shown the world that it cared more about propping up a murderous
dictator than it valued its 225-year alliance with America.

Kenneth R. Timmerman is a senior writer for Insight magazine. His book "The
French Betrayal of America" is just out.

And the US does not have a very strange relation with oil producer like
SA? Even when people of that country funded terrorism...

"Nemo l'ancien" wrote in message
...

And the US does not have a very strange relation with oil producer like SA?
Even when people of that country funded terrorism...

No, we don't have a relationship anything like that which France apparently
had with Saddam, as is becoming more clear with every release of information
regarding these "sweetheart deals" between your companies and Saddam. What
is the going rate these days for a major foreign policy decision in France?
Maybe you could bid them out, or just sell them in an open market... The
question is no longer whether or not France's support can be bought by the
highest bidder, but just what the final cost will be. Recent reports
indicate that maybe the best place to find the answer to that question would
be in Beijing, which has apparently bought the latest chunk of the FPMQ
(French Policy-Making Quota), in return for that recent proposal from Chirac
to dump the arms export restrictions against the PRC.

Brooks

Nemo l'ancien wrote:

And the US does not have a very strange relation with oil producer like
SA? Even when people of that country funded terrorism...

The US relation with SA is [was?] indeed a strange one.

But AFAIK, it's individuals, some through shake downs by OBL,
that provided the money, not outright government collusion.

The Saudis now seem to realize their fence sitting WRT radical
"religious" training hasn't done them any good either.

The primary value of SA for the US has been in keeping oil prices
stable via production variations, not so much cozy deals for oil
companies. The world has benefited from this as much as the US.


SMH

In article ,
Nemo l'ancien wrote:

And the US does not have a very strange relation with oil producer like
SA? Even when people of that country funded terrorism...

Which makes the French behavior right?

Kevin Brooks wrote:
"Nemo l'ancien" wrote in message
...

And the US does not have a very strange relation with oil producer
like SA?
Even when people of that country funded terrorism...

No, we don't have a relationship anything like that which France
apparently had with Saddam, as is becoming more clear with every
release of information regarding these "sweetheart deals" between
your companies and Saddam.

same source as WMD ?

Rgds
Alex

"Alex A" wrote in message
...
Kevin Brooks wrote:
"Nemo l'ancien" wrote in message
...

And the US does not have a very strange relation with oil producer
like SA?
Even when people of that country funded terrorism...

No, we don't have a relationship anything like that which France
apparently had with Saddam, as is becoming more clear with every
release of information regarding these "sweetheart deals" between
your companies and Saddam.

same source as WMD ?

Eh? Can't quite get the meaning of that fragment.

Brooks


Rgds
Alex

On Fri, 19 Mar 2004 09:34:34 +0100, "Alex A" wrote:

Kevin Brooks wrote:
"Nemo l'ancien" wrote in message
...

And the US does not have a very strange relation with oil producer
like SA?
Even when people of that country funded terrorism...

No, we don't have a relationship anything like that which France
apparently had with Saddam, as is becoming more clear with every
release of information regarding these "sweetheart deals" between
your companies and Saddam.

same source as WMD ?

Rgds
Alex

France betrayed all those that thought her a friend. WMDs may have
been an intelligence failure, but the Total/Elf deals were criminal
behavior. Your country is a shameless whore.

Al Minyard

"Alan Minyard" a écrit dans le message de news:
...


France betrayed all those that thought her a friend. WMDs may have
been an intelligence failure, but the Total/Elf deals were criminal
behavior.

What about the juicy contracts US oil companys were about to sign with the
Taliban, during the summer before 9/11 ??? You know, the pipelines through
Afghanistan.....

2 wrongs don't make 1 right, but just stop giving out moral lessons, OK?

Your country is a shameless whore.

Hey; you need one to know one!

--
Pierre-Henri Baras
___________________________
French Fleet Air Arm
http://www.ffaa.net

Encyclopédie de l'Aviation
http://www.aviation-fr.info

"Pierre-Henri Baras" wrote in message
...

"Alan Minyard" a écrit dans le message de news:
...


France betrayed all those that thought her a friend. WMDs may have
been an intelligence failure, but the Total/Elf deals were criminal
behavior.

What about the juicy contracts US oil companys were about to sign with the
Taliban, during the summer before 9/11 ??? You know, the pipelines
through
Afghanistan.....


Unlike the situation with Iraq there were no UN sanctions in place so it
would have been legal for Unocal to go ahead but in fact it withdrew
from the deal in December 1998, almost 3 years before the Sept 11
attacks when the true nature of the Taliban regime became clear.


2 wrongs don't make 1 right, but just stop giving out moral lessons, OK?


But 1 right and 1 wrong make an interesting comparison.

Keith