FYI.
It seems like the US eventually will have a lot of leeway in
administrating the Iraqi oil.
It seems clear that the Iraqis will have to pay
for an occupation themselves.
Arno
http://daastol.com/egg/
http://nrstg1p.djnr.com/cgi-bin/DJInteractive?cgi=WEB_ST_STORY&GJANum=117893267&page=st/story&DBNAME=WSJ01-1043798461&HDAN=J0302800336&binding=141714&Search=iraq+oil&View=View1&HDNUM=13&TOTALHITS=15
International
U.S. Probes
Its Iraq - Oil
Rights
International Law Gives Occupying Power Freedom to
Maneuver
By Chip Cummins
01/29/2003
The Wall Street Journal
Page A16
(Copyright (c) 2003, Dow Jones
& Company, Inc.)
London -- IF U.S. FORCES find
themselves in control of Iraq, international law would give
them a large degree of leeway in managing the country's oil fields.
Some
analysts expect Washington -- eager to avoid accusations of
going to war for oil -- to refrain from making big
decisions about the industry in the early days of any Iraqi
occupation. But international treaties
concerning military occupation and precedents dating to
the early 1800s give the
administration ammunition to press for a more aggressive role in
Iraq's oil
patch.
"If you justify [actions] under the law of military
occupation, you can justify just about anything," said one administration
official familiar with the current debate among Pentagon and State Department
lawyers.
For
now, military planners are focused on how best to secure oil infrastructure
and protect it from
possible sabotage by Saddam Hussein, officials say. But Pentagon and State Department
attorneys also are debating how to interpret various treaties and precedents
for a number of scenarios that may unfold in
Iraq. The official familiar with the
discussions said one
option calls for taking advantage of precedents that would allow military
commanders significant leeway in oil operations, though he stressed there
were other views. "The thought is, give them the widest possible latitude in the
first couple of weeks to
get the sector up to speed," the official said.
The Hague Convention of
1907 and subsequent regulations provide an occupying
"belligerent" specific guidelines when it comes to administering natural
resources like forests, mines and oil fields. Such resources remain the
property of the territory's people and shouldn't be used in a manner that
will permanently damage them, the convention states. It is also widely
interpreted to require
that revenue
from the resources should go
toward occupation costs or otherwise benefit the
territory's people.
But because an occupying force must also
restore civil order quickly, it could become a powerful steward over oil
resources, scholars of international law
say. Such a force would be entitled to make key
operational decisions aimed at getting essential infrastructure --
including oil fields, pipelines and refineries -- up and running.
"You are the temporary
sovereign," said R. Dobie Langenkamp, director of the National
Energy-Environment Law and Policy Institute in Tulsa, Okla. And unlike other
natural resources, oil has
clear military importance. As such, scholars agree that an army would enjoy
leeway to control it
long after hostilities end. "Oil is a threat to the occupying
belligerent. If you don't control it, you don't control the country," Mr.
Langenkamp said.
Commanders like Army Gen. Tommy Franks, the
head of U.S. forces in the region, would be in a
position to make crucial calls about which refineries to switch back on after
the shooting stops, and when to crank the spigots open or shut at some 1,500
Iraqi oil wells. The U.S. would have the authority to use Iraqi oil
revenue to immediately hire oil-field-service companies and other contractors to repair
damages caused by the fighting and to quickly restore production, legal experts
say.
Commanders also would be able to require managers and
workers at
Iraq's state oil company to show up each day to
keep the oil flowing, some experts say. But it isn't clear whether
those workers could legally call a strike, said Adam Roberts, who writes
about the law of occupying armies as a professor of international relations at
Oxford University. "There is discretion
there, but that has to be exercised in the interests of the Iraqi people," he
said.
Secretary of State Colin Powell told reporters last
week that should the U.S. end up in Iraq, it would hold its oil sector, which
boasts the world's second-largest reserves behind Saudi Arabia, "in trust" for the Iraqi
people. "Whatever
we do will be consistent with international law with respect to the
responsibilities of an occupying power," he said.
Washington wouldn't be guided by legal
precedents alone, of course. The Bush administration also would have to consider how the Iraqi public and
the international community would react to a postwar oil policy.
U.S. control over Iraqi oil fields would
also raise questions
that international law hasn't yet addressed. For instance, how would an occupied
Baghdad be
represented at the
Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries? What role would the United
Nations -- which already oversees Iraq's oil exports -- play in a
post-Saddam Hussein regime?
Some
precedents would also limit U.S. actions
in Iraq's oil
patch, scholars say. A
tribunal after World War
II found that Japan
breached international law by aggressively exploiting occupied oil fields
in the Dutch East
Indies and using the oil to fuel its own war needs.
Another widely cited precedent involves
Israel's operation of occupied oil fields
in the Sinai after the 1967 Six-Day War. The
State Department criticized
Israel's
actions in that case,
arguing that Israel had no right to develop oil
fields in territory that wasn't already being developed for oil
production.
Oxford's Prof. Roberts said that precedent may mean no new
wells in Iraq
during an American occupation -- if this generation of
Washington lawyers heeds earlier decisions.
"U.S. views on this matter were quite important at the time," he said.