According to a
joint investigation by BBC's Newnight and Harper's Magazine, the planning for war and the future of Iraq's oil began in the early days of the first Bush administration. The trouble was that there were two plans. One from the State Department which involved a coup d'etat to remove Saddam Hussein followed the setting up of a state-controlled oil company to ensure that American 'Big oil' got the best deal. The second from the neo-cons in the Pentagon, which involved a massive privatization of Iraqi oil resources, was aimed at breaking OPEC by dramatically increasing oil production to bring down prices.
In the end, the State Department won because
"the oil industry prefers state control of Iraq's oil over a sell-off as it fears a repeat of Russia's energy privatization. In the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union, US oil companies were barred from bidding for the reserves."
In addition, the 'US oil companies are not warm to any plan that would undermine Opec, "They [oil companies] have to worry about the price of oil."'
One of those interviewed 'claims that plans to sell off Iraq's oil, pushed by the US-installed Governing Council in 2003, helped instigate the insurgency and attacks on US and British occupying forces.
"Insurgents used this, saying, 'Look, you're losing your country, your losing your resources to a bunch of wealthy billionaires who want to take you over and make your life miserable," said Mr Aljibury from his home near San Francisco.
"We saw an increase in the bombing of oil facilities, pipelines, built on the premise that privatization is coming."'