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:"Iraq has the world’s second largest proven oil reserves. According to oil industry experts, new exploration will probably raise Iraq’s reserves to 2-300 billion barrels of high-grade crude, extraordinarily cheap to produce, leading to a gold-rush of profits for international oil firms in the post-Saddam era. The four giant firms located in the US and the UK have been keen to get back into Iraq, from which they were excluded with the nationalization of 1972. They face companies from France, Russia, China, Japan and elsewhere, who already have major concessions. But in the post-war setting, with Washington running the show, the US-UK companies expect eventually to overcome their rivals and gain the most lucrative oil deals that will be worth hundreds of billions, even trillions of dollars in profits in the coming decades." [http://www.globalpolicy.org/security/oil/irqindx.htm Global Policy Forum].
== The First Gas Contract ==
In September 2008, oil giant Shell become the first western oil company to win significant access to the energy sector in Iraq since the 1970s, in a $4bn deal, which angered the industry's critics who argued that there had been no competitive tendering. Shell signed an agreement with the OIl Ministry to form a joint venture with the South Gas Company, in Basra to process and market natural gas extracted on 19,000 sq km (7,300 sq miles) of land.
"Iraq has one of the world's largest natural gas resource bases and I am delighted that the Iraqi government, including the ministry of oil, have supported Shell as the partner for joint venture with the South Gas Company," Linda Cook, executive director of Shell was reported as saying. The company will own 49% of the new Iraqi business.
The contract was condemned by critics. Greg Muttitt from [[Platform]], a British-based organisation which monitors oil companies criticised the secrecy of the deal. "What has definitely happened here is that a country under occupation has introduced an oil policy that is favourable to western oil companies. The [US] state department has already admitted that it has advisers working on oil policy and there is a likelihood they may have drafted the Shell contract."
Although the gas was originally for local markets, in time it may be exported as LNG to the Mediterranean or Britain. <ref> Terry Macalister, [http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2008/sep/24/royaldutchshell.iraq "Shell's $4bn Iraq breakthrough could boost Britain's natural gas supplies"], ''The Guardian'', September 24, 2008 </ref>
== Resources==
