Autumn 2004: Oil Lobby Group Calls for Use of Production Sharing Agreements in Iraq

The International Tax & Investment Centre (ITIC), a corporate lobby group that advocates for pro-business investment and tax reform, issues a major report titled Petroleum and Iraq’s Future: Fiscal Options and Challenges, expressing the view that Iraq’s relationships with oil companies should be managed through the use of production sharing agreements (PSAs). The paper calls PSAs the “simplest and most attractive regulatory… framework.” It says this view is supported by “international experience and regional preferences,” though critics of PSAs will note that PSAs are not in fact popular among the major oil producing countries of the Middle East. “It is difficult to overstate how radical a departure PSAs would be from normal practice, both in Iraq and in other comparable countries of the region,” says Greg Muttitt of PLATFORM, a British oil industry watchdog group. “Iraq’s oil industry has been in public hands since 1972; prior to that the rights to develop oil in 99.5 percent of the country had also been publicly held since 1961. In Iraq’s neighbors Kuwait, Iran, and Saudi Arabia, foreign control over oil development is ruled out by constitution or by national law. These countries together with Iraq are the world’s top four countries in terms of oil reserves, with 51 percent of the world total between them.” The ITIC report also argues that foreign investment in Iraq’s oil sector will help “kick start” Iraq’s economy and free up funds for other programs. [Muttitt, 2005]