War for Oil = #1 Grounds for Impeachment. 4Oct07 Tulsa, 1 of 6 presentations

[LeftDemocrat]

As suspected, the illegal invasion of Iraq was all about helping the oil cartels.  Their 30-year exclusion from Iraq has been effectively ended by the prolonged U.S. occupation; exit plans are now possible, as the profits will now go to the corporations.  They couldn't compete against nationalized Iraqi oil so they brought in the might of a gullible U.S. Armed Forces to do their bidding, under Cheney and Rice, oil barons.  Oh, and the war-profiteering along the way was fun for mercenaries and "defense" contractors.  Let's hope that well runs dry, with a U.S. pull-out, in the near future.

September 14, 2008
Oil giants flock to Iraqi auction
Danny Fortson

THE world’s largest oil companies will converge on London next month for a chance to re-enter Iraq for the first time in more than three decades.

In all, 34 oil companies, including BP, Royal Dutch Shell, BG, Exxonmobil, Gazprom and Sinopec, are expected to attend a roadshow held by Iraq’s oil minister Hussein al-Shahristani when he officially kicks off the bidding for so-called technical-service agreements.

These will govern exploitation of eight of the country’s largest fields.

At the event, scheduled for October 13, bidders will be given technical data on the sites in question — six giant oilfields including Kirkuk and West Qurna and two gasfields — bidding parameters and remuneration terms.

The opening of Iraq, which sits on the world’s third-largest oil reserves after Saudi Arabia and Iran, has been eagerly awaited by the industry but has been repeatedly delayed by security concerns and political infighting that has held back a crucial hydrocarbons law.

But recent deals struck by the country’s oil ministry with Shell and China National Petroleum, despite the continuing political limbo of the hydrocarbons law, have raised expectations that oil companies will be welcomed back en masse for the first time since the industry was nationalised in 1972.

The oil ministry called off talks on no-bid short-term advisory contracts this summer in place of the longer deals that feature in the new plan.

The oil ministry is not expected to award contracts for at least another six months, pushing back a previously announced plan to increase production by 500,000 barrels per day to 3m barrels by the end of this year.

The Kurdistan regional administration in northern Iraq has been signing contracts with foreign oil companies for more than two years, but has been unable to attract the largest firms who feared angering the federal government and getting shut out of auctions for the giant fields in the south.

Contracts will be fee-based rather than the industry’s preferred revenue-sharing model.

http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/article4748541.ece
red emphasis and strikeout added

In those last three sentences of the above article (published in the London Times overseas, not in the U.S.) are the signs of the Iraqi government's increasingly realization of its strong negotiating position.   Expect delays.  Expect continued occupation until the theft of Iraqi oil is more complete.

Meanwhile, "Consumers for Peace" has provided the following rationale for boycotting some of the worst offenders in America's war of aggression against Iraq.

source: "Consumers Guide to Gasoline" (Dec 2007)

The worst offenders in the "Blood for Oil" moral depravity are:

ExxonMobil . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .including On the Run convenience stores
Shell . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . including Jiffy Lube stores, and Quaker State motor oil
BP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . including Amoco stores, Arco stores, and Castrol motor oil
Chevron/Texaco . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . including Texaco stations
Valero . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  . . including Diamond Shamrock stations, Ultramar, Total and Beacon stations
ConocoPhllips  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . including Phillips 66 and 76 stations

Avoid buying gas or motor oil from the above as much as possible.

Details:

EXXONMOBIL - ExxonMobil gasoline is sold at about 16,000 stations in the U.S., according
to its website, and it owns the On the Run convenience stores.

In 2001, immediately after George W. Bush and Dick Cheney took office, Lee Raymond, then head of ExxonMobil, met with Mr. Cheney. Circumstantial evidence described in greater detail
on http://www.consumersforpeace.org/ suggests that ExxonMobil was involved in planning and
promoting the invasion and occupation of Iraq.

Iraq’s oil reserves are coveted by ExxonMobil and other major non-governmentally-owned oil
companies, often called the “majors”, because more and more of the world’s oil is coming under the control of state-owned oil companies such as Saudi Aramco, threatening the very existence of the “majors” in their current form. In fact, they are not the major oil companies anymore.

It is also critical, from the viewpoint of the “majors” that they get access to the oil at very favorable prices. This will be achieved in Iraq if the Iraqi Parliament passes the U.S. designed oil law now pending before it. ExxonMobil has been pushing this law, along with BP, Shell,
ConocoPhillips and Chevron.
references here www.iraqoillaw.com and here
http://www.carbonweb.org/documents/crude_designs_small.pdf

And ExxonMobil has been the most aggressive of the “majors” in fighting attempts by oil producing
nations to renegotiate contracts to get a higher proportion of income from their oil, thus reducing the share of the “majors” who have been given access to their reserves.

ExxonMobil is among the top three sellers of petroleum products to the Pentagon, with sales in
Fiscal Year 2007 at $1.02 billion, making it second top seller in that year after Shell.

ExxonMobil makes billions in unearned profits as oil prices rise due to Middle East conflict, as do other oil companies.

In addition to its own production, ExxonMobil buys four million barrels of oil a day. It imports
oil from Iraq for refining at Houston and Port Arthur, Texas and Baton Rouge and Morgan City, Louisiana.

One of the most serious pollution sites is in the Port Arthur-Beaumont, Texas, area where discharges from ExxonMobil and other firms have created extremely unhealthy living and working conditions.
http://healthandenvironment.org/articles/homepage/1008.

ExxonMobil has still not paid $4.5 billion for the damage from the ExxonValdez spill in 1989.

The Center for Public Integrity reports that between 1998 and 2005, ExxonMobil, a company
with 111 Superfund (toxic waste) sites, spent more than $66 million on lobbying.

Hilton Kelley, an organizer fighting refinery pollution on the U.S. Gulf Coast, ranks ExxonMobil’s refinery operations the worst in the Port Arthur-Beaumont area, along with those of Total, a refiner selling gasoline to a variety of marketers.

For more details on ExxonMobil see:
http://www.coopamerica.org/proGrams/rs/profile.cfm?id=221
http://www.exposeexxon.com/and http://www.consumersforpeace.org/

SHELL - Shell has about 13,000 retail stations in the U.S. operated by Shell or Motiva Enterprises LLC, in which it is a 50/50 partner with Saudi Refining Inc. Shell says it is number one in total gallons of gasoline sold in the U.S., based on a 2003 report.

Shell owns Pennzoil and Quaker State oil and operates the Jiffy Lube stores. It owns Outlaw gasoline additives, Gumout, Slick 50, Blue Coral, Axius, Black Magic, Fix-A-Flat, Westley’s, Rain X and Medo products.

Shell was the top seller of petroleum products to the Pentagon in FY 2007 at $1.86 billion in
sales; its FY 2006 sales were $1.15 billion.

Shell has also been a major pusher for the proposed, highly exploitative Iraq oil law.

Shell imports oil from Iraq for refining at Morgan City, Louisiana and through Motiva at Port Arthur,
Texas.

Shell gets 74 percent of its U.S. oil imports from the Persian Gulf through Motiva.

BP - British Petroleum is an international oil company with 11,000 stations in the United States, concentrated in the Midwest and Southeast and with a significant presence in New York, New Jersey, south Florida and in Chicago and Washington, DC. Castrol motor oil is a BP brand.  Amoco was merged with BP in 1998 and Amoco stations have been converted to BP stations. A few Amoco stations still exist, but the money goes to BP , which still markets “Amoco Fuels” and “Amoco Ultimate”.   Arco is a subsidiary of BP, operating 1,100 stations, primarily in California, Nevada, Oregon, Washington State and Arizona.

British Petroleum was the largest petroleum supplier to the Pentagon in FY 2006 with sales of
$1.9 billion; in FY 2007 its sales dropped to $249.4 million.

British Petroleum has also been involved in pushing for the new Iraq oil law that, if approved by the Iraqi parliament, will bring oil companies huge profits. British Petroleum has joined with a Russian company in signing an exploration and production agreement with the Kurdish regional government in northern
Iraq. The Iraqi central government in Baghdad, under control of the U.S., is declaring such contracts illegal because it wants all contracts approved only by the central government. This improves the chances of U.S. firms getting favorable deals in northern as well as southern Iraq.

British Petroleum imports oil from Iraq for refining in Los Angeles, California.

In spite of BP’s efforts to “green” its image, CorpWatch reported in 2005:
“…British Petroleum is the world’s third largest oil and gas company and one of the largest polluters on the globe. Exploration and production of crude oil and natural gas are the company’s main activities, and it operates in 100 countries in Europe, North and South America, Asia and Africa. British Petroleum’s profits come with enormous human cost and environmental damages…”

The Corpwatch report went on to document human rights and environmental abuses in the construction of the Baku-Tibilisi-Ceyhan pipeline, undertaken by a consortium led by British Petroleum. The 1,100 mile pipeline runs from Baku in Azerbaijan, one of the world’s first major oil fields, near the Black Sea, to the Turkish seaport Ceyhan. http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=12340    Problems on this project have included: exploitation of workers; corruption in land compensation; intimidation of land owners along the pipeline (as many as 30,000 were affected); detention and torture of a Turkish human rights worker who was aiding villagers; running the pipeline near an earthquake fault and through a national park; faulty pipeline construction. In May, 2007, a remarkable story published on the website of the U.K.’s The Mail on Sunday, cited a former British Petroleum official saying that BP had worked with British intelligence to help install “a more pro-Western, pro-business regime” in Azerbaijan. The article said that the British Petroleum-U.K. operation “contributed to the coup in May 1992 which saw President Ayaz Mutalibov toppled by Abulfax Elchibey, and then a second change a year later which saw Haydar Aliyev take power.”   And the article continued: “Just months after Aliyev was installed, British Petroleum signed the so-called ‘contract of the century’, a $10 billion deal which placed BP at the head of an oil exporting consortium.”

British Petroleum denied in the article that it had supplied weapons for the operation...

In 2001, British Petroleum agreed with the EPA to pay a $9.5 million fine for violating the Clean Air Act at eight of its refineries in California, Indiana, North Dakota, Ohio, Texas, Utah ,Virginia and Washington.  From 1998 to 2005, British Petroleum, which has 111 Superfund (toxic) sites, spent $30 million on lobbying
on Superfund, Clean Air Act and energy issues, according to the Center for Public Integrity
http://www.publicintegrity.org/superfund/report.aspx?aid=852

For a more detailed summary of health, safety, environmental and ethical concerns with respect to British Petroleum see http://www.coopamerica.org/programs/rs/profile.cfm?id=196

CHEVRON/TEXACO - Chevron, which owns Texaco, operates about 7,500 retail stations, primarily
in the West and South and another 2,100 Texaco stations in the South and East. Caltex is also a Chevron brand as are Havoline and Delo oils.

Chevron, with ExxonMobil, Shell, Conoco/Phillips and BP, have been involved in creating and
promoting the extremely exploitative oil law that is now under consideration by the Iraqi parliament.

Chevron imports oil from Iraq, refining it at its plants in Pascagoula, Mississippi and Honolulu,
Hawaii.

Chevron imports 32 percent of its petroleum from the Persian Gulf.

Chevron sold $62 million in petroleum products to the Pentagon in FY 2006 and $7.9 million in
FY 2007.

Chevron contributed $34.25 million to defeat Proposition 87 in California, a measure that would
have taxed energy companies in order to fund development of alternative energy sources. The company also contributed $250,000 to defeat Proposition 89 that would have risen corporate and financial institution taxes by .2 percent to fund state-level political campaigns. source :  http://www.igs.berkeley.edu/library/election2006/camp-finance.html. Both measures were defeated at the polls in November, 2006.

Hilton Kelley, an organizer fighting refinery pollution along the U.S. Gulf Coast rates the Chevron refinery in Port Arthur, Texas the third worst after ExxonMobil and Total, who share the number one spot; Valero is number two.

VALERO - Valero Energy is the largest refiner in the U.S., with 17 refineries around the country.
It operates 4,100 retail stations in the U.S. and Canada, primarily in the Midwest, Southwest and West under the brand-names Valero, Diamond Shamrock, Ultramar, Total and Beacon.

Valero had petroleum sales to the Pentagon of $661.2 million and $735.1 million in FY 2006
and FY 2007, respectively. In 2006, Valero was the largest importer of crude oil into the U.S.,
with about 32 percent coming from the Persian Gulf.

Valero imports oil from Iraq, refining it at refineries in Corpus Christi and Texas City, Texas
and Long Beach, California.

In 2005, Valero was required by the Environmental Protection Agency and the Justice Department to spend $700 million to clean up emissions at its refineries in Colorado, Louisiana, New Jersey, Oklahoma and Texas. Valero was also required to pay a $5.5 million fine and to spend another $5.5 million on environmentally beneficial projects and for payments to communities near its refineries.

Hilton Kelley, an organizer working to reduce environmental hazards of refineries on the U.S. Gulf Coast, ranks Valero refining operations in Port Arthur, Texas as second worst environmentally after ExxonMobil and Total, who share first place.

CONOCOPHILLIPS/76/PHILLIPS 66 - ConocoPhillips has about 8,600 retail gasoline stations
in the U.S., operating as Conoco, Phillips 66 and 76. Conoco is the third largest importer of crude oil into the U.S. after Valero and ExxonMobil. It gets about 8 percent of its oil from the Persian Gulf, and it imports oil from Iraq, which is refined in Los Angeles, California.

Conoco sold $180.7 million in petroleum products to the Pentagon in FY 2006 and had no sales
in FY 2007.

Conoco is in partnership with the Russian oil company Lukoil to try to get approval from the
Iraqi government to develop the West Qurna oil field in southern Iraq, with Conoco to get about
20 percent of the deal.

In California, Conoco contributed $3 million to a campaign to defeat Proposition 87, which
sought to cut oil consumption in the state by 25 percent and to set a new tax on oil production to raise $4 billion for alternative energy systems. The firm also contributed $100,000 to defeat Proposition 89, which would have imposed a .2 percent tax on corporations and financial institutions to provide public funds to finance state-level political campaigns. Both propositions were defeated in November, 2006.

[/quote]
red emphasis and strikeout added

You have other choices.  Including ethical companies from which to buy your gasoline and motor oil.

[LeftDemocrat]

Consumers For Peace :: Consumers Guide To Oil Profiteers
http://consumersforpeace.org/pages/consumers-guide.html

Consumers for Peace recommends these gas & oil suppliers/retailers:

Sinclair . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . gas and oil, refined locally, many gas station locations in Tulsa area, 100% gas
Fast Stop/Break Time/Cenex. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .co-op gas and oil, refined in the MidWest by NCRA co-op, marketed by Growmark, MFA, and CHS
Sunoco. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . gas and oil, refined locally, a few stations in the Tulsa area
Flying J . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .one station in east end of Tulsa, at highway intersection
Kum & Go . . . . . . . . .  not listed by ConsumersforPeace, but see below; many locations in Tulsa area
Citgo . . . . . . . . . . . . . .gasoline no longer available in Oklahoma, since 2007; some oil products still available in Tulsa

Giant/Mustang. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . only in AZ & NM
Country Fair/Keystone/Kwik Fil/Red Apple . . . . . . . . . . . only in PA, NY, OH
Murphy Oil . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  in TX, AR, etc.
Irving. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . only in ME, NH, MA, VT
Hess. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . only on the eastern seaboard, from MA to FL
Gulf . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . only in DE, NY, NJ, PA, OH



SINCLAIR - Sinclair has 2,607 stations in 20 states, concentrated in the Midwest and West. Sinclair imports oil from Canada and uses no Persian Gulf oil. It has refineries in Wyoming and Oklahoma. Sinclair had sales of $47.5 million in Pentagon sales in FY 2006 and NONE in FY 2007.   Buy local gasoline. Buy blood-free oil and gas. Switch to Sinclair.

Locations in Tulsa:

Kwick Mart
223 S Utica Ave
Tulsa

7-DAYS Food Mart
1910 N Lewis Ave, Tulsa

One Stop
4029 S Union Ave
Tulsa

Lucky Sam's
3407 N Lewis Ave
Tulsa

Quick Pick
903 N Yale Ave, Tulsa, OK
918-836-8240

Crystal City Sinclair
4207 Southwest Blvd, Tulsa, OK
918-446-5238

Buy-N-Save
4850 S Elwood Ave, Tulsa, OK
918-446-8026

Apache Mart
2474 N Yale Ave, Tulsa, OK
918-834-1415

Kwick Mart III
7494 E Admiral Pl, Tulsa, OK
918-836-6442

Southside Sinclair
1726 E 51st St
Tulsa, OK 74105
(918) 742-8867
4.67 miles from downtown Tulsa, OK 74103

Sinclair Service Station
6624 E Pine St
Tulsa, OK 74115
(918) 835-0333
5.27 miles from downtown Tulsa, OK 74103
* also referred to as the Sinclair Station at Pine and Sheridan

Lucky Quick Stop Inc
3636 S Sheridan Rd, Tulsa, OK
918-794-4055

Rush N Go
1060 S Mingo Rd, Tulsa, OK
918-835-7232

Sinclair
W. Edison in Gilcrease Hills West shopping center

etc.

Plus, these locations outside of Tulsa:

Royal Trip
670 E 141st St, Glenpool, OK
918-322-5602
13.48 miles away from downtown Tulsa
also referred to as the Sinclair Station in Glenpool, OK 1/2 mile east of hwy 75 on 141st St

Kelch Sinclair Service Station
811 E Trudgeon St
Henryetta, OK 74437
49.24 miles from downtown Tulsa, OK 74103

Miller's Sinclair
137 S 5th St # B, Collinsville, OK
918-371-2263 (17.11 miles away)

Leonard General Store
15723 E 167th St S, Leonard, OK
918-366-3551 (19.44 miles away)

New EZ Stop
531 Foster Rd, Mannford, OK
918-865-4750 (19.45 miles away)

Smitty's
1699 N Lynn Riggs Blvd, Claremore, OK
918-341-3299 (24.5 miles away)

Billy-B's Convenience Store
Highway 64, Cleveland, OK
918-358-3885 (24.7 miles away)

etc.

This is a good locator for Sinclair gas stations, from MapQuest:  http://www.mapquest.com/mq/4-0xuCNeEu
Or go here:  http://www.sinclairoil.com/locations.asp





FAST STOP - There are more than 300 networked FAST STOP locations throughout Illinois, Iowa, Michigan, Nebraska, Ohio, Oklahoma and Wisconsin. Most locations offer regular and ethanol-blended fuels, convenience store items, 24-hour fueling, groceries and milk, and fountain drinks.  Join the self-help movement by buying from the oil and gas cooperative.

The National Cooperative Refining Association (NCRA), with a refinery in McPherson, Kansas, imports oil from Canada. NCRA appears to have no contracts with the Pentagon. NCRA provides gasoline to three cooperatives with retail convenience store and gasoline operations. They are:

CHS Inc. – 1,600 Cenex stores in Minnesota, Iowa, Illinois and Kansas.

Growmark – 300 Fast Stop stores in Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas and reportedly in Oklahoma (but not confirmed by the co-op's search engine).

GROWMARK System
1701 Towanda Ave.
Bloomington, IL 61702
Phone: 309-557-6000 • Fax: 309-557-7145
E-mail: mailus@growmark.com
Web site: www.growmark.com
Founded: 1927
Owners: Farmer Cooperative

MFA Oil – 76 Breaktime stores in Missouri and Arkansas.

MFA Oil Co.
One Ray Young Drive
Columbia, MO 65205-0519
Phone: 573-442-0171 • Fax: 573-876-0321
E-mail: admin@mfaoil.com
Web site: www.mfaoil.com
Founded: 1929
Owners: Farmers Cooperative

Use this locator to find Fast Stop gas stations out of state: http://www.growmark.com/prodserv/faststop/faststop_locator_search.asp





FLYING J - Flying J, which operates the largest chain of truck stops in the U.S., has 256 travel plazas and fuel stops in 42 states and six Canadian provinces. Another 30 facilities are being built or planned. Flying J has refineries in Utah and California, processing crude oil from the U.S. and Canada. It has no imports from the Persian Gulf. Flying J has no sales to the Pentagon.

Blood-free oil and gas at Flying J, with one gas station in the east end of Tulsa:

Flying J Travel Plaza
121 N 129th East Ave, Tulsa, OK
8.89 miles from downtown Tulsa, OK 74103

Use this station locator nationwide: http://www.flyingj.com/flyingjPortalWebProject/appmanager/flyingj/home?_nfpb=true&_pageLabel=flyingjPortal_portal_page_98




SUNOCO - From its refineries in Toledo and Tulsa, Sunoco produces more than 110,000 barrels of gasoline per day.Sunoco produces more than 300,000 barrels (12,000,000 U.S. gallons) per day of gasoline from its Northeast refining complex in Philadelphia. Sunoco has 4,800 retail stations in 24 states.

Sunoco does not import oil from the Persian Gulf and appears to have no involvement in Iraqi oil interests.

Sunoco’s recent sales to the Pentagon:

FY 2005-$109.6 million;
FY 2006 – 105.6 million;
FY 2007 – zero.

In 2005, the EPA and the Justice Department required Sunoco to sign an agreement - covering its refineries in Pennsylvania, Ohio and Oklahoma - to spend $285 million to cut down on emissions of toxic gases.

Options in the Tulsa area:

Hood's Sunoco Sales & Service Station‎
105 W Kenosha St
Broken Arrow, OK 74012
(918) 251-4444





KUM & GO - Kum & Go was one of the first convenient store chains in the nation to offer a 10% ethanol blend, E-10, a no-lead gasoline. It was introduced in the Springfield, Mo., and Tulsa, Okla., markets in late 2007.

Across the country, 57 % of consumers feel that it is important to use ethanol as an additive to ease the country's dependence on foreign oil, according to a study by the Ethanol Promotion and Information Council.

K&G also makes E85, a fuel mixture of 85 % ethanol and 15 % gasoline and is a renewable fuel source that reduces harmful environmental emissions (in Oklahoma, available only in Owasso). Kum & Go’s total reduction of fossil fuel dependency was 14.5 million gallons from ethanol alone last year. E85 is for Flex Fuel Vehicles (FFV) only.

Kum & Go name, which was adopted during the 1970s, is a play on the phrase "come and go" using the initials of Krause and Gentle, which is Kum & Go's parent company, based in Des Moines, Iowa.

Options in the Tulsa area:

Kum & Go, 3939 S. Peoria, Tulsa, OK ---
Kum & Go, 10010 South Riverside Pkwy, Tulsa ---
Kum & Go, 7675 E. 51st St, Tulsa ---
Kum & Go, 12807 E 86th St N., Owasso, OK, reportedly selling Sunoco fuel ---
Kum & Go 14505 E. 86th Street, Owasso, OK, reportedly selling E85 alternative fuel ---
etc.




CITGO -  Citgo, with about 12,000 retail outlets in the U.S., is totally owned by Venezuela's national petroleum company (PDVSA). Citgo does not import oil from the Middle East or from Iraq in particular. Citgo sold $117,301 in petroleum products to the Pentagon in FY 2005 and had NO sales to the Pentagon in FY 2006 and FY 2007. Sixty percent of Venezuela's crude oil exports go to the United States. Venezuela is using its oil revenues to assist its low-income citizens. 

Buy Latin oil and gas and buy blood-free gasonline. At Citgo's.  If you can find it.  They pulled out of Oklahoma for the most part, in 2007.

Is this gas station still operating, just south of Tulsa?

Citgo Scotts C Store Great Scott Enterprises
12055 S State Highway 51
Coweta, OK 74429 Map
tel. (918) 486-3692

There is still CITGO presence in Tulsa, with CITGO FASTLUBE locations:

1. ROCKET LUBE INC
1435 S Lewis, Tulsa, OK 74104
Phone: (918) 744-6161
2.
ROCKET LUBE & WASH
4529 South Peori,a Tulsa, OK 74105
3.
MR KWIK LUBE
4222 S Memorial Dr, Tulsa, OK 74145
4.
LUBE SERVICE
4702 S Mingo, Tulsa, OK 74155
5.
MR KWIK LUBE
6510 E 71st St, Tulsa, OK 74133
6.
CITGO QUIK LUBE
9724 E 81st St, Tulsa, OK 74133

http://www.citgo.com/CITGOLocator/StoreLocator.jsp



Gas stations are independently owned; meaning it’s possible for them to switch to a blend at any time. Thus, your motto should be, “always check the pump before filling up.”   YMMV.   I take no responsibility for the information compiled above; make your own inquiries before acting on any of the above recommendations.  The information about blood-free oil and gas stations is provisional and can change at any time.

[LeftDemocrat]

Iraq War Veterans Raid Gas Station
Operation W.A.N.T. We are not toys.

[LeftDemocrat]

MSM comentator has been aboard all this time:

Cafferty File: Was the Iraq war about oil all along? -
Blogs from CNN.com 2
http://caffertyfile.blogs.cnn.com/2008/06/
includes video segment

"I will go to my grave as Jack Cafferty, Private Citizen, believing that these people committed war crimes."
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1662283,00.html

The CNN commentator put war-crime prosecution on the table during his Cafferty File segment in a July 2008 CNN "Situation Room."
video download available here: http://newsbusters.org/static/2008/07/2008-07-17CNNSRCafferty2.wmv
(about 10 MB, will open in WinAmp media player, or similar)

In the past year, Cafferty has called for the impeachment of Bush administration officials or criticized Democrats for failing to do so on 3 other occasions: August 21, 2007; January 7, 2008; and just over a month ago on June 12, 2008.

transcripts of Cafferty File segments:

'Why Won't Congress Impeach Bush?'
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/brent-baker/2008/01/08/cafferty-channels-mcgovern-why-wont-congress-impeach-bush

'Cafferty Scolds House Democrats for Not Pushing to Impeach Bush'
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/brent-baker/2008/06/13/cafferty-scolds-house-democrats-not-pushing-impeach-bush

Cafferty Channels McGovern: 'Why Won't Congress Impeach Bush?'
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/brent-baker/2008/01/08/cafferty-channels-mcgovern-why-wont-congress-impeach-bush

[LeftDemocrat]

Capitulation for Bush-Cheney imperialist pipedreams.

It looks like most of the issues have been resolved.  Only a small disgruntled minority is left in Iraq.

It also looks like U.S. Big Oil interests are forced to walk away empty-handed.  Iraqi oil seems to be largely still in Iraqi hands.

It is a vote to end the occupation of Iraq, today in Baghdad

The total defeat of the US plan to install a supine ally in the Middle East

by Jonathan Steele
guardian.co.uk
Thursday November 27 2008

Iraq's unexpected deal with the American government for the occupation to end at last.

Debated by the Iraqi parliament today, the agreement has been virtually ignored in many left-liberal circles as well as by most of the mainstream American media. We are so inured to thinking that the US will always get its way in Iraq, thanks to its enormous investment of troops and treasure, that any potentially contrary development is dismissed. The US has agreed to leave Iraq. "You must be joking," comes the response. "Why would they build 14 mega-bases if they didn't intend to stay for decades?" The US is allowing Iraqi courts jurisdiction over crimes committed by American troops. "Give me a break. You can't believe that," I hear the sneer.

Well, look at the agreement's text. It is remarkable for the number and scope of the concessions that the Iraqi government has managed to get from the Bush administration. They amount to a series of U-turns that spell the complete defeat of the neoconservative plan to turn Iraq into a pro-western ally and a platform from which to project US power across the Middle East.

The title gives the game away - Agreement on the Withdrawal of United States Forces from Iraq and the Organisation of Their Activities during Their Temporary Presence in Iraq. Remember how Bush (and his ally, Gordon Brown) constantly rejected any "artificial timetables" for pulling out the troops. Everything had to be "conditions-based", meaning that no dates could be given in advance since all depended on whether Iraq's own forces were ready to fill the gap. It was an elastic formula that allowed Washington to delay a withdrawal for ever.

That has gone by the board. The agreement stipulates that "all US forces shall withdraw from all Iraqi territory no later than December 31 2011". More remarkably, all combat troops will leave Iraqi towns and villages and go back to base by the end of June next year. Pause for a moment and take that in. Six years and three months after the invasion, Iraqi streets will be a US-free zone again.

Iraq will have a veto over all US military operations. A clause added at the last minute after pressure from Iran says that Iraqi land, sea and air may not be used as a launch pad or transit point for attacks on other countries. The Iraqi government eagerly took up the point after US helicopters flew into Syria and attacked a compound there last month, claiming it was a base from which foreign fighters entered Iraq. Iraq joined Syria in protesting against the raid.

Under the withdrawal agreement, no Iraqi can be arrested by US forces except with permission from Iraqi authorities, and every Iraqi who is arrested in these circumstances must be handed to Iraqi forces within 24 hours. The tens of thousands of detainees in US custody must either be released or turned over to the Iraqis immediately. US troops may not enter or search any Iraqi house without an Iraqi judge's warrant, except if they are conducting a joint combat operation with the Iraqi military.

US contractors - the armed mercenaries in their SUVs whom Iraqis hate even more than the American military - will lose their immunity and be subject to Iraqi law, a development that is already prompting many security firms to start pulling out. US troops who rape Iraqi women or commit any other crime while off duty and off base will have to stand trial in Iraqi courts.

The deal gives Iraq's national resistance almost everything it fought for. How did Nouri al-Maliki's government achieve it? The main reason is that Iraqi nationalism and the occupation's unpopularity have become overwhelming. Opinion polls have long shown that a majority of Iraqis wanted the occupation to end. They found it humiliating and oppressive. Al-Qaida's infiltration, and the sectarian conflict which its supporters and recruits successfully provoked in 2006 and 2007, distracted many Iraqis for a time. Some saw the US as the lesser enemy. But al-Qaida's power has waned thanks to the Awakening movement of Sunni tribal leaders; and the primary issue, the US intervention, has returned to centre stage. Nationalist sentiment, articulated from the first weeks of the occupation by Sunni insurgents (many of whom later joined the Awakening movement) as well as Moqtada al-Sadr's Shia militia, has spread through the country's ruling elite. This summer Prime Minister Maliki began to realise that he had more to gain by posing as the man who achieved a US withdrawal than by trying to block it. It is a triumph for Iraq.

There are caveats. US forces need not leave for three years, a point which troubles many in the Iraqi parliament which is scheduled to vote on it today. The Sadrists oppose the agreement largely for that reason. Under pressure from their leading imam, the main Sunni block called for a referendum. Maliki has conceded the point, though the pact will come into force and only lapse if voters turn it down next year. Now the Sunnis are adding new demands.

Obama's position is compatible with the pact, and his staff approved it before the Bush team signed. The president-elect wants US combat troops out of Iraq by May 2010, well before the pact's deadline. The joker in Obama's policy is his call for a "residual force" to stay to fight al-Qaida and carry on training Iraqis. The pact allows some US forces to remain, but only after joint "strategic deliberations" in the event of an external or internal threat. As for training, there has to be a separate US-Iraqi agreement.

From the American point of view, the main thing the pact does is to allow the US to withdraw with dignity. No hasty Vietnam-style humiliation, but an orderly retreat from an adventure which was illegal, unnecessary, and a disaster from the moment of conception. Like most Iraqis, I am content with that. American neoconservatives will declare victory, as Frederick Kagan, one of the architects of the "surge", did this week. But the fact is that Bush and his ideologues wanted to make Iraq a protectorate and stay indefinitely so as to intimidate Iran and Syria. Now they have been forced to give up, and a newly confident Tehran has been helping its neighbouring Shia-led government in Baghdad to show them the door.

j.steele@guardian.co.uk

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/nov/27/iraq-us-foreign-policy

Sadrists have threatened to re-start the insurgency against U.S. forces if Obama does not honor the deal to withdraw American forces.

Will use legal authorizations to degrade pact – Sadrist MP
November 27, 2008 - 05:14:59

BAGHDAD / Aswat al-Iraq: Lawmaker Aqeel Abdulhussein of the Sadr bloc said on Thursday that the entity will use all its constitutional and legal authorizations to degrade Parliament’s vote on the Iraqi-U.S. security pact that took place earlier today, explaining that no one is committed to the pact but those who voted on it.

“What happened violates international traditions and Iraq’s constitution,” Abdulhussein said in a press conference in Baghdad that was attended by Aswat al-Iraq.

“We have started the mandate stage, not the withdrawal,” he added.

“Occupation forces will remain in Iraq for a long time, not until 2011,” he noted.

“The pact will allow occupation forces to practice violations, steal Iraqi funds, and to disseminate principles that eliminate Islam,” he asserted.

The Sadr bloc occupies 29 out of 275 seats in Iraq’s council of representatives.

MH (P)/SR

http://en.aswataliraq.info/?p=103805

[LeftDemocrat]

Shell gets what it wants.  Blood for Oil.

Many oil majors skip Iraq oil expo

AFP
Dec 05, 2008

In September, Royal Dutch Shell signed a gas joint venture estimated to be worth four billion dollars, becoming the first Western major to enter Iraq through a deal with Baghdad after nearly four decades.

Saddam threw out foreign oil companies when he nationalised the sector in 1972.

Many major global oil companies have stayed away from the first Iraq Energy Expo which opened in Baghdad on Friday, amid uncertainty about plans for oil production partnerships.

ConocoPhillips of the United States and Russia's Lukoil and Gazpromneft are among 40 exhibitors, but BP, Exxon and Total are absent although they say they want to return to Iraq after being thrown out by then dictator Saddam Hussein 36 years ago.

A national oil law has been delayed in parliament over bitter differences among the assembly's Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish factions over the sharing of the revenues generated from oil sales.

Last month, Iraq and China National Petroleum Corp (CNPC) nevertheless signed a three-billion-dollar deal to develop the Al-Ahdab oil field in Wasit province for 23 years.

The project, the first major oil development deal that a foreign firm has secured in Iraq since Saddam's overthrow in 2003, revives a contract signed in 1997 that granted China exploration rights to the Al-Ahdab oil field.

Shahristani said the authorities are "in the home straight" before awarding contracts, after the Iraqi government in October invited tenders for eight tempting oil contracts.

An executive from Gazpromneft, the oil division of Russian gas giant Gazprom, believes his company's prospects could be boosted by previous Russian experience in Iraq under Saddam's regime.

"It is like the kalashnikov. The Russians and Chinese have technologies, certainly more primitive but which are the most appropriate for the Iraqis at this stage of their development," the executive said.

The Iraqis say they are optimistic about their capacity to attract investors, thanks to the relative improvement in security in the war-torn country.

However, some companies already working in Iraq are dissatisfied with progress.

"Since we have been here, we haven't made money," an executive of a US oil company said. "We sent some expert teams, then we took them back (as) we had no results. There are far too many problems."

Because of a lack of investment and modernisation of ageing installations, Iraq produces only 2.4 million barrels a day, including two million for export, way below peak levels in the 1980s when it exported 3.4 million barrels a day.

Source: AFP Global Edition

http://wiredispatch.com/news/?id=477999

More coverage:

Iraqi Oil Conference Draws Interest
December 6, 2008

The conference here was buzzing with prospective oil-industry executives. Representatives of Japan's Nippon Oil Exploration Ltd., Lukoil Overseas Holding Ltd., an affiliate of the big Russian producer, and the oil subsidiary of Danish conglomerate A.P. Moller-Maersk Group all said they will now consider establishing footholds in Iraq.

Also attending the session were executives from U.S. majors ConocoPhillips and Marathon Oil Corp., along with big state-owned giants like Indonesia's Pertamina.

Ryunosuke Onogi, general manager at Nippon, said with the improvements in the security situation, he expects the Japanese foreign ministry to lift a ban on companies working here, and Nippon may look to establish an office in Baghdad next year. "The sooner the better," he said.

Alexander Byrikhin, a spokesman for Russia's Lukoil Overseas, said the company is already working on three projects with the oil ministry involving technical training for Iraqis.

Many big oil companies are competing for technical-service contracts to boost production at existing fields. Baghdad hopes to bid out the contracts by next summer.

China National Petroleum Co. is ahead of the pack, signing in August a $3 billion deal with Iraq to develop an oil field in the southeast. It was the first major contract signed with a foreign company and the first revival of a deal made under the Saddam Hussein regime.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122848892389182791.html

[LeftDemocrat]

Reversal. Shell may not get what it wants.

It's important that this company, and others like it, not be rewarded for sponsoring aggressive war.  Else, there will be no end to resource wars.

West's access to Iraqi oil in doubt

    * Terry Macalister
    * April 19, 2009

 EXPECTATIONS that foreign companies can cash in on Iraq's oil riches are in doubt after a key parliamentary body in Baghdad pledged to "push Shell out" and halt a forthcoming licensing round.

The warning from the secretary of the Iraqi parliament's oil and gas committee, Jabir Khalifa Jabir, was seen by financial analysts yesterday as a serious threat to Western investment opportunities in a country that holds the second-largest oil reserves in the world.

Shell has been considered a front runner in the race to seize control of the Iraqi energy sector after signing a $US4 billion ($5.5 billion) deal to process and market gas from the south and ship it, possibly to Britain, as liquefied natural gas.

But the preliminary agreement was unconstitutional and detrimental to Iraq's economic interests, said Mr Jabir, who worked for more than 15 years at Iraq's state-run Southern Gas Company.

"We are going to do everything we can to revoke this deal and to push Shell out," he said.

"These deals are illegal because they didn't go through parliament. The companies and their lawyers knew the old Iraqi oil law very well."

Any new deals Baghdad signs in bidding rounds under way with BP and others would also be subject to revocation, he warned

Mr Jabir argued that Iraqi law 97 clearly states all arrangements of this nature must be passed by parliament.

The committee had studied the preliminary Shell deal for the past six months and all members have concluded that it is illegal, he said.

The deal with Shell and the wider oil licensing round have been controversial because many critics believed they were unduly influenced by the United States and Britain, who occupied the country after toppling Saddam Hussein in 2003. Critics saw the invasion as a "war for oil" and believed it would open the way for US and British oil companies to regain assets seized from them decades earlier through nationalisation.

Analysts at IHS Global Insight, an economic forecasting group, said the latest developments were alarming.

"The Shell deal looks increasingly like a litmus test for progress on all Iraq's oil and gas projects, with any potential failure likely to remove most of the political legitimacy from the Oil Ministry's interpretation of Iraq's constitution and oil law," they argued.

http://www.smh.com.au/world/wests-access-to-iraqi-oil-in-doubt-20090418-aasd.html?page=-1

We at ImpeachOK1 hope that the Iraqi Parliament is able to stand up for Iraqi interests over their oil resources.

[LeftDemocrat]

This interview on DemocracyNow~! is more than 2 years old, but we were remiss, here at ImpeachOK1, in not bringing it to your attention sooner:

excerpt from rush transcript

AMY GOODMAN: You talk about wars for oil.

ANTONIA JUHASZ: Yeah, I mean, ...we are, of course, engaged in wars for oil and will continue to do so.

I think it’s quite clear that the invasion of Iraq was a war not for the United States to potentially get a greater supply of oil, but rather for Exxon, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, BP/Shell, to get their hands on Iraqi oil, believed to be the second or the largest remaining conventional source of oil. I mean, essentially, there’s very little conventional oil left out there, relatively speaking, to what we use. The oil companies need to gain greater ownership of what’s left. What’s left is in three countries—Iran, Iraq and Saudi Arabia—largely. ... The Bush administration has used our military to expand access to oil all over the world, but the big pockets of oil: Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia.

And if we want to end this—the war in Iraq for oil, prevent a war in Iran, prevent militarization for oil around the world, one of the key things I believe we must accomplish is bringing into control, bringing into a sizable entity, Big Oil, so that its profits cannot dominate our political decision making.

AMY GOODMAN: How do you propose taking on Big Oil, Antonia Juhasz?

ANTONIA JUHASZ: A number of ways, but two very simple ones. A great campaign launched by Oil Change International calling for the separation of oil and state, essentially based on the very successful campaigns against the tobacco industry in the 1990s that made it toxic for elected officials to receive tobacco money. It became a badge you did not want to wear. And they started not taking that money, and it made it possible to start regulating an industry that everyone thought was impenetrable throughout the ’90s, now no longer considered quite so quite so much. Oil, of course, is another toxic substance on which we have developed an intense addiction. Getting candidates to renounce all oil industry money and calling on individuals to vote for the least oily candidate out there, and being able to hold election promises to account after elections.

Also... I believe, following the model of the successful populace a hundred years ago who broke up Standard Oil, breaking up the big oil companies today.

AMY GOODMAN: Antonia Juhasz, I want to thank you for being with us, congratulate you on your second new book, The Tyranny of Oil: The World’s Most Powerful Industry—And What We Must Do to Stop It.

http://www.democracynow.org/2008/10/7/the_tyranny_of_oil_antonia_juhasz

[LeftDemocrat]

Reversal on the reversal: Shell gets what it wants anyway.

Iraq Says It's Near Final Draft Of $12 Billion Gas Contract With Shell

By Benoit Faucon and Angus McDowall, Of DOW JONES NEWSWIRES

VIENNA -(Dow Jones)- Iraq is in the final stages of agreeing on a draft of its $12 billion gas contract with Royal Dutch Shell PLC, the country's oil minister said Wednesday, allaying fears the project was mired in a legal dispute.

Speaking upon his arrival in Vienna for a meeting of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, or OPEC, Hussein al-Shahristani also said a planned bidding round for three major gas fields would go ahead as planned on Oct. 20 after being delayed twice before.

 The Iraqi cabinet last month delayed the finalization of the project with Shell and Japan's Mitsubishi to capture gas from Basra's oilfields because of legal issues related to the joint venture, the website of Iraq Business News reported at the time. The cabinet already had approved the planned investment in June, but it is now waiting to sign the final draft once it is resubmitted by the oil ministry.

Shahristani said 13 companies had bought tender documents for the coming auction of the Akkas, Mansouriya and Siba gas fields.

"But I don't know how many are going to bid," he added.

Companies previously linked with the tender include Eni SpA (E, ENI.MI) and Edison SpA (EDN.MI), both of Italy, Japan's Mitsubishi, France's Total SA (TOT, FP.FR), South Korea's Kogas and Russia's TNK-BP Holding (TNBP.RS).

Iraq is intent on developing the fields to help boost its creaking levels of electricity supply, which still stand at only a few hours a day in some parts of the country.

Aiming to exploit estimated reserves of around 11.23 trillion cubic feet of gas in the three fields, Baghdad has already twice delayed the bids to accommodate foreign bidders, and has sweetened terms of the eventual deal.

It has promised to end the extra "signature bonus" payments of several hundred million dollars made by successful bidders in previous auctions, and will take or pay for all of the gas produced from these three fields.

http://www.nasdaq.com/aspx/stock-market-news-story.aspx?storyid=201010131632dowjonesdjonline000477&title=iraq-says-its-near-final-draft-of-12-billion-gas-contract-with-shell

Just a reminder: You can vote at the pump, by boycotting Shell gas and oil.

See earlier post, on gas companies hopelessly mired in the U.S. imperial aggression that was the Bush-Cheney unjustified invasion of Iraq, now cashing out for the oil companies who egged on the invasion.

[LeftDemocrat]

In the predictably pro-war Washington Post, the beltway bubble is still giving time, space, prestige and column-inches to apologists for the Bush-Cheney regime and the illegal invasion of Iraq.  Nowadays, having failed to create the supine ally in the oil-rich Middle East that the neocons had hoped for in their war of choice in Iraq, the apologists are arguing for the indefinite occupation, or at least partial occupation, of the country.

The Post just published the woeful analysis by Meghan O’Sullivan, who served as President George W. Bush’s deputy national security adviser for Iraq and Afghanistan from 2005 to 2007.  Far from descrying the fact that it was a case of "blood for oil", the Post does not ask her to apologize for her role in the violation of international law and the precipitation of the U.S. into pointless bloodshed.  Indeed, not only is she given space in their austere newspaper, O'Sullivan has also been rewarded with the Jeane Kirkpatrick professorship for the practice of international affairs at Harvard University.  A neat illustration of the complicity of Harvard University with the military-industrial-congressional-academic complex that always finds reasons to go to war, and never finds reasons for ending it.

Rather than repeat her sorry words, or force you to wade through the layers of obfuscation, here is commentary from the first independent news agency in Iraq:

"Need for oil, one of strategic necessities of our presence in Iraq" - former US official
9/12/2011 5:05 PM

BAGHDAD / Aswat al-Iraq: An official in the former U.S. President’s Administration, George Bush, has said on Monday that one of the important strategic necessities for the presence of the U.S. forces in Iraq is “the west’s need for oil with suitable prices.”

The former National Security Advisor of former President, George Bush, for Iraq and Afghanistan, has said in an article published in the Washington Post, “Iraq is among the few countries that can satisfy the urgent and escalated needs of the West for oil, urgently and for suitable prices.”
 
The article is concluded by saying that “at a time when discussions are taking place between the US and Iraqi governments about the complete withdrawal of the US forces from Iraq at the end of the current year, according to the Strategic Agreement, signed between the two countries, the substitute would be laying a legal framework for the presence of a limited number of forces, not exceeding 10,000 US soldiers to help the Iraqi forces to face the challenges that it is not able to deal with.”
 
Noteworthy is that the U.S. forces are scheduled to withdraw from Iraq by the end of this year, according to the Strategic Security Agreement, signed between both countries, but certain American parties prefer the extension of the presence of those forces after the year 2011.
 

http://en.aswataliraq.info/Default1.aspx?page=article_page&id=144807&l=1

Nary a mention in her analysis of the downside of leaving 3,000 or as many of 10,000 sitting ducks in Iraq: viz. any American troops left behind will have to contend with the Sadrists' credible claim that if the U.S. proves to be fork-tongued --if it fails to live up to its promise to leave at the end of this year-- violence against U.S. troops will resume in Iraq.   Always willing to provoke, cause provocation and taunt, let alone interfere in a country she still knows nothing about, O'Sullivan is happy to put more troops in harm's way, to prove her pet theories about "international practice."

Let's hope someday she sits in on a class on international law, taught by her more-than-peers at Harvard.  She needs to give up her understanding of the "practice" of foreign relations, as she was tainted by, or was a primary cause of the stain during, the Bush-Cheney years and neoconservative wars of choice.

O'Sullivan is transparent in her desire to use force to extract better oil prices for the U.S., just the same way as the neocons hoped that military occupation of Iraq would lead to favorable deals for U.S.-owned oil companies.  The Iraqis are more clever than that!

The Post really should reconsider its policy of allowing warmongers to use its pages as a bully pulpit. 

Link to the offending article: http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/why-us-troops-should-stay-in-iraq/2011/09/07/gIQADo2bFK_story.html

[LeftDemocrat]

Ever heard the expression 'cut off one's nose to spite one's face' ?

One of the U.S. oil majors may have greeded itself out of access to a major oil deposit in southern Iraq, due to a hasty grab for fields in northern Iraq, an example of over-reaching that is perceived by Iraqis as a foreign corporation meddling in Iraq's sovereign affairs.

Exxon oil deal with Kurds shakes Iraq
Published: Nov. 11, 2011

U.S. companies had been expected to the big winners in Iraq after Saddam Hussein was toppled. But Americans were widely perceived by Iraqis as occupiers, and only one of the 11 fields up for auction went to an American major -- Exxon Mobil. The U.S. withdrawal is expected to exacerbate a long-running dispute between the central government and the independence-minded Kurds over oil rights. Relations have been worsened by political in-fighting in Baghdad that has held up contracts and project work while the government presses for higher production.

The Iraqi federal government in Baghdad claims sole authority over the energy industry anywhere in Iraq.

Exxon Mobil, like other majors, had to accept a take-it-or-leave-it Iraqi offer of a $2 per barrel payment to secure the crucial 2009 contracts. That's one of the lowest rates on the world and Baghdad has made clear that won't change. This has embittered most of the big companies like BP, Royal-Dutch Shell and Exxon Mobil.

Exxon Mobil's oil and gas exploration agreement with Iraq's semi-autonomous Kurds, who're at odds with Baghdad over the country's energy wealth, marks a significant, and tantalizing, departure by U.S. oilmen amid the current military withdrawal. The central government in Baghdad deems all oil contracts signed with the KRG, which runs the Kurdish enclave that spans three of Iraq's northern provinces, without Baghdad's approval to be illegal.

The breakaway move into Kurdistan, the first by any of the oil majors operating in Iraq under 20-year production contract signed in 2009, could cost Exxon Mobil its stake in the giant West Qurna Phase One mega-oil field in southern Iraq.

The field contains an estimated 8.7 billion barrels of oil.

The KRG, guided in part by American advisers, has signed controversial deals with some 40 small oil companies, mainly U.S. and European wildcatters unable to bid on the major contracts, since 2006 as it seeks to build an oil industry independent of Baghdad.

The Kurds say their enclave could contain as much as 45 billion barrels. Iraq's overall reserves are pegged at 143.1 billion barrels.

http://www.upi.com/Business_News/Energy-Resources/2011/11/11/Exxon-oil-deal-with-Kurds-shakes-Iraq/UPI-42781321042952/

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

"Cutting off the nose to spite the face" is an expression used to describe a needlessly self-destructive over-reaction to a problem: "Don't cut off your nose to spite your face" is a warning against acting out of pique, or against pursuing revenge in a way that would damage oneself more than the object of one's anger.