No bid oil contracts in Iraq awarded to foreign oil companies

I heard about this on NPR nearly a month ago, but the vaunted MSM is just now getting on the story. Below is a link and the first few paragraphs of the story from MSNBC:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25453428/

BAGHDAD - Iraq opened international bidding for eight enormous oil and gas fields Monday, paving the way for investment in a nation with some of the world’s largest petroleum reserves.

If approved, contracts to update and manage those fields could involve the biggest foreign stake in Iraq since its oil industry was nationalized more than 30 years ago and help Iraq reach its goal of nearly doubling petroleum production by 2013.

That could be good news with the price for a barrel of oil breaching $143 for the first time ever on Monday. But the contracts won’t be signed for a year, and if Western firms win a dominant role it could feed perceptions that U.S.-led forces toppled Saddam Hussein to get at Iraq’s natural resources. [YA THINK?]

Those concerns were heightened by expectations that Iraq would announce short-term no-bid consulting contracts with five Western oil firms on Monday. The New York Times reported about two weeks ago that the firms included Royal Dutch Shell PLC, BP PLC, Exxon Mobil Corp., Chevron and Total.

ADDENDUM - July 2, 2008

I just realized that Bob Herbert conveyed this situation quite articulately in his column yesterday:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/01/opinion/01herbert.html