If Access To Oil Fields Was a Reason Why We Fought the Iraq War...

...then we're not doing a very good job cashing in.

Iraq, emerging from the shadow of war, expects to boost its oil output to rival the level of top producer Saudi Arabia after awarding some of its most attractive oilfields to global oil companies this week.

By the end on Saturday of a two-day bidding round for 10 oil contracts -- the second auction since the 2003 U.S. invasion -- Iraq had received pledges from oil firms to boost its output by 4.765 million barrels per day, almost double its current output.

[...]

Some 30 international oil companies braved the threat of violence and attacks to come to Iraq, putting aside security concerns just days after car bombs killed 112 people in Baghdad.

Oil majors from the United States appeared conspicuously uninterested in the fields on offer in the second round, confounding expectations that they might end up with the lion's share of Iraq's oil sector as a result of the U.S.-led war.

So, if U.S companies didn't end up with access to the Iraqi oil fields, who did? How about: Russia's Lukoil (the "supergiant" West Qurna field); Royal Dutch Shell and Malaysia's Petronas (the "supergiant" Majnoon field); Angola's Sonangol (the Qayara field near Mosul); China's CNPC, France's Total and Malaysia's Petronas (the 4.1-billion-barrel Halfaya field); Petronas and Japan's Japex (the Gharaf field); and Russia's Gazprom (the Badrah field). In short, there isn't a U.S. company to be found in the winners of the latest Iraqi bidding round, according to the Reuters story.

Personally, I was always highly skeptical that we fought the Iraq War mainly, or even partly, at the behest of (or directly in support of the interests of) U.S. oil companies. That is not to say that I think we would have been anywhere near Iraq if there hadn't been oil in the neighborhood - Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, UAE, etc. - and if we weren't "addicted" to oil. In fact, we'd already fought one such war ("Operation Desert Storm" in 1991) to expel Iraq from OPEC member Kuwait and to protect Saudi "The Prize" Arabia's oil fields from a takeover by Saddam Hussein. And yes, I'd definitely acknowledge that Bush and Cheney had close ties to the oil industry and to the Saudis (particularly in the case of the Bush family) which very likely skewed their judgment about the entire situation. But was there a direct connection between a desire to enrich the oil companies and the invasion of Iraq? I dunno, I guess I'm just not too big on conspiracy theories. But if so, the latest Iraq bidding round indicates that this was one of the least effective "conspiracies" ever.