Is it really all about oil? Dagbladet investigates:

- Iraq's oil will be taken in custody for the Iraqi people, to the advantage of the Iraqi people, says Secretary of State Colin Powell. "The UN will control Iraq's oil", both Bush and Blair are saying.

That sounds all very good. But the Iraqi people has heard it before. Both when the British "liberated" Iraq during World War I, and when they did it during World War II. Both times the exploitation of Iraqi oil by international oil companies led to hypernationalist sentiments - which again made possible Saddam's rise to power.

That the Iraqi people was told that "The UN will control Iraq's oil" when it was conquered by the British during World War I is certainly a .. refreshingly atypical historical claim, considering that 1) The UN did not yet exist in 1917. Nor did the League of Nations. 2) Iraq was first created a few years later, and 3) oil wasn't discovered there until 1927.

If they were told anything, it was probably more like "see, this organization we're going to create after the next world war is over is going to control a resource we hope to find in the near future, oh and by the way we're thinking of renaming this place Iraq." And that doesn't sound very good, and I don't think the Iraqis ever heard it again.

Sometimes it makes me wonder how much people really undestand how oil is being controlled nowadays. So many in the general public still think in terms of oil company concessions, when that system basically fell apart by 1983. Nowadays, all oil, produced by whomever, under whatever national or oorporate control, is subject to price in the free market system, so it really doesn't matter who "controls" the territories that produce oil. What matters is who decides how much oil is being sold on the market. And so far that has always been decided through negotiations. There is no reason to believe that that will change.

Oil companies all over the world, including those in the US, would suffer (remember that the US produces about 40% of its own oil domestically). It has always been a major tenet of US energy policy to have a sustainable price, in order to protect DOMESTIC producers. To all of a sudden dump "stolen" Iraqi oil on the US market would drive US producers out of business.

So there is no way that the US would want to try to disrupt the free market system by taking oil out of Iraq without paying for it. But that is what naive members of the public seem to think is a possibility.

But there is still the issue of where the revenue stream goes. A system already exists, however, in the oil-for-food program, so a precedent has already been set. There is no reason why such a precedent should not be continued in the aftermath.

Here's my modest proposal for Iraqi oil. First, hire a Swiss or other high respected accounting firm to audit the records of the Iraqi National Oil Company and publish the results. Two, hire a world respected oil services company to undertake a complete investigation of the condition of Iraq's oil fields, wells, etc. Publish it in Iraq. They have been reports that Saddam has damaged the oil fields in order to get money out of them fast at the cost of future productions. Three, use the funds, audited and controlled for the construction of Iraq. Four, consider paying $100 a month to every Iraqi out of the oil revenues and/or privatize Iraq's oil resources by giving Iraqis the shares in these companies.

I'm not even sure that most of the people insisting on an oil-grab conspiracy are even thinking in terms of oil company concessions. The mental model is not even that realistic.

It's more the idea that oil is a scarce, precious commodity like gold ingots, and if you stole a lot of it, you'd be rich! Rich, I say! Thus greedy oil companies must want to start a war to get it, even if they say the exact opposite.

I'm seeing signs of a somewhat more concrete argument, that a motivation for war is the enrichment of petroleum *services* companies like Cheney's old firm Halliburton. I suppose that if the US Army goes out of its way to *start* oil well fires, this theory will be confirmed.

Bjorn, please fill us in on the Norwegian reaction to President Bush's speech.

I like the ultimatum. It is like a sheriff's: Saddam Hussein and his sons have 48 hours to get out of town.

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