Final Draft of the Iraq Oil Law
Raed published the draft of the Iraqi Oil Law that was passed to parliament after being approved by the cabinet. Below is a link to the law and Raed’s translation:
Draft Law In Arabic
Draft Law in English
Raed writes:
Following are the most important changes in the law since the last draft was leakeda c ouple of weeks ago. It shows how some parts of the law has changed in a dramatic way by the council of ministers. I’ll try my best to translate the four appendices as soon as possible.
The outline is almost the same. The title of Article 35 was changed slightly, articles 39, 40, 41, 42 , 43 have different numbers now.
Definition number 24 “the producing province” is confirmed now, and the words “(needs revision)” have been removed. This definition excludes representatives from the central and western provinces from participating in the decision-making process, because it excludes all provinces producing less than 150 thousand barrels a day. I think it’s an attempt to turn the discourse into a Sunni-Shia fight because these areas are inhabited mostly by Sunni Arabs. This will mean that the Iraqi Federal Oil and Gas council will have a representative from ExxonMobile sitting on its board, but won’t have a representative from Baghdad or Anbar.
Two new definitions were added to the list. Number 37 is the Federal Oil and Gas Council, and number 38 in the Bureau of Independent Consultants.
Article 5 has some changes, especially in :
A Third: one sentence was added at the end of this article “in accordance to the constitution”
c, third: in accordance to article 10 instead of article 9
c, forth: changed
c: fifth: changed
c: eleventh: added
e, seventh was removed
article 9 a: changed
article 10 b: changed
article 10 d third: the second period changed to 45 days instead on 60
article 11 c changed, this one is very important because it deals with distributing oil revenues
article 11 d removed
article 13 g: changes from the Federal oil and gas council to the regional authority
33/a/5 added
33 b removed
38 e removed
39, 40, 41 articles sequence changed
39 d change (RESOLUTION OF DISPUTES)
40 (existing contracts) dramatically changed.