subject: How Nuri al-Maliki would tackle the New Hydrocarbon Law? [print this page] How Nuri al-Maliki would tackle the New Hydrocarbon Law?
After a prolonged political limbo, Iraq's Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki is once again in the battlefield that promises Iraq a pleasant bellwether, and why it won't? Years of handling conflicts between Kurds, Shiite, and Sunni Iraqis has given al-Maliki the confidence to seek a political regime to draft the awaiting new hydrocarbon law. Iraq's oil reserves and production infrastructure has remained a real bone of contention which has backed off the major field development organizations, both local and foreign, to participate in the commercial production sector of Iraqi oil economy. Apart from having suffered as a war-torn country, Iraq also has suffered at the hands of internal ethnic non-ethnic rifts that brags oil-struggle' ever since the discovery of oil reserves on the unequal share of political power between Iraqi Federal Government and Kurdish Regional Government.
U.S while turning no stone unturned to ignite the disputes on the Iraqi internal sects, on many occasions has suggested breaking apart Iraq would be a better option. This solution presented by Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Joseph Biden was the one that had Iraqi Central Government adopted, peace would have ruled the war-ravaged country. Many a times the Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) in the past has attempted to negotiate with Iraqi Federal Government in the wake of signing contracts to attract foreign companies work in Iraq deserts. Every time KRG is disappointed over the fields allotted to them according to the specifications annexed in the Draft Hydrocarbon Law that requires Sunni held territories' to be worked upon. On the other end, Sunni Iraqis who are in minority are more concerned over getting a larger share of oil revenues.
Revenue sharing is the most complex rift that the KRG believe to be the natural birth right of the people of Kurdistan. Such that the oil has become political, oil revenues have in the past been accumulated in the North and South of Iraq, thereby ignoring the share of other parts of the country. Al Maliki in the past has faced many challenges, where he has been forced by international companies to offer their bid for crude oil and gas. The political apathy that prevails between Sunni and Kurdish Iraqis is more of economic nature than what most of us think to be as personal sectarian fissures. So, a new hydrocarbon law would most probably decide how such cross-sectarian conflicts need to be tackled. Especially, when it has bought enough time for the new Shiite Prime Minister to ploy in between the Sunnis and the Kurds.
Al Maliki's statement "I do not say that this government, with all its formations, satisfies its citizens' aspiration, nor the political blocs', nor my ambition, nor any other person's ambition, because it is formed in extraordinary circumstances", he referred most probably to those extraordinary rivalries that persisted even long before Iraq was indulged in war under Saddam Hussein. This might prove a new beginning for an experienced Iraqi Prime Minister.
