Free Republic

TEHRAN - Iran has left the development of two oilfields to the energy giant British Petroleum (BP), an informed source told the Tasnim News Agency on the condition of anonymity. The announcement is a follow-up to the September meeting between Iranian Oil Ministry officials and BP top managers, where the Iranian side headed by Amir Hossein Zamani Nia, the deputy oil minister for international affairs and trade, agreed to transfer the development of two oilfields to BP based on the new model of Iranian oil contracts, known as Integrated Petroleum Contract (IPC), which is due to be unveiled soon. ---snip---...

Hillary Clinton withheld Benghazi-related emails from the State Department that detailed her knowledge of the scramble for oil contracts in Libya and the shortcomings of the NATO-led military intervention for which she advocated. Clinton removed specific portions of other emails she sent to State, suggesting the messages were screened closely enough to determine which paragraphs were unfit to be seen by the public. For example, one email Clinton kept from the State Department indicates Libyan leaders were "well aware" of which "major oil companies and international banks" supported them during the rebellion, information they would "factor into decisions" about about...

From leaky roofs to secret agents: how the files I found in Iraq's looted foreign ministry cast light on the paranoid world of Saddam Hussein How many Iraqi officials does it take to fix the leaky roof of a diplomat's house in London? How long does a skilled translator need to convert one of George Galloway's parliamentary speeches into Arabic? In almost 1, 000 pages of Arabic prose, each stamped with the Eagle crest of Iraq, the files found inside the foreign ministry in Baghdad cast a somewhat surreal light on the questions that turned the bureaucratic wheels of Saddam...

BAGHDAD: The US-run Iraqi administration has cancelled or suspended three oil contracts with Russian and Chinese firms signed by the ousted government of Saddam Hussein. Thamir Ghadhban, the US-appointed de facto Iraqi oil minister, said recently that all pre-war contracts would be re-evaluated and new deals announced soon. "We will examine each one on its legal, economic merits," he said. But he added that Russia's biggest oil company Lukoil had already lost a contract in West Qurna while a Chinese deal to develop the al-Ahdab field was suspended by "mutual agreement". No details were given about the third contract. His...