April 23, 2007
Iraq’s oil curse
A postscript to my story in the FT on April 19 about estimates of huge undiscovered oil reserves in Iraq. I was called by Felicity Arbuthnot, a London-based journalist, who interviewed Tariq Aziz, the then deputy prime minister of Iraq, when Saddam Hussein was in power, for the online newspaper the Palestine Chronicle. His key quote: "Iraq has the second largest oil reserves, actually the first. You can find oil wherever you drill in Iraq. The US wishes to dominate oil, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf. They want to keep us dormant, bring in a pro-US government and present that as bringing about ‘democracy’ and ‘human rights’." It seems that on the question of Iraq’s oil reserves, at least, he may have been on to something.
