A U.S. Coast Guard officer stands guard at the Mina al Bakr oil terminal off the coast of Iraq

Kazi Mahmood, IOL Southeast Asia Correspondent

KUALA LUMPUR, April 12 (IslamOnline.net) – Now that it has laid hands on Iraqi oil resources, the U.S. will dominate the world oil market altogether and will be able to set the price for oil product, a number of experts warned.

“The U.S. will surely control the oil fields in Iraq despite claims that it will not do so. It did not go to war and spent U.S. 80 billion dollars in that war and not gain anything out of it,” said Ramli Walid, an economist attached to an Islamic financial institution in Malaysia, told IslamOnline.net Saturday, April 12.

Another expert in Indonesia agreed the U.S. will now control the oil in Iraq and will dictate the markets too in the future.

Dr Muhammad Qurtubi MSc, an expert in oil, said the U.S. will use Iraq oil to dominate the OPEC, Republika reported on Friday, April 11, 2003.

He added that the OPEC will be victimized if the U.S. decides to increase the Iraqi oil production to its full capacity, resulting in serious drop in oil prices.

“In case the U.S. increases the Iraqi oil production capacity to its maximum, which would be around 4 million barrels a day, the economies that depend largely on oil sales will suffer definite blows,” Ramli warned.

A political analyst in Indonesia however said it will not be easy for the U.S. to regulate and control fully Iraq’s rich oil fields without violating the Geneva Convention’s guidelines on economic exploitation of captured nations as a result of a war.

“Under the Geneva Convention, an occupying power (which is the U.S. now in Iraq) is restrained from making long term commitments, and this has both political and economic implications such as imposing restrictions on the abuse of Iraq’s oil fields by the U.S.,” said another expert in the oil industry in Malaysia.

He added that Iraq oil proceeds will either be controlled by the U.N. or by an authority with the blessing of the U.N., Russia, Germany, UK, USA, China and France for example.

However, the U.S. has already allotted contracts to Halliburton, a company chaired by U.S. vice president Dick Cheney before assuming office.

Halliburton is a services company that is already on the ground in Iraq, shutting burning oil wells and expecting to get further contracts around Iraq to maintain and even run those oil fields.

In Kuala Lumpur oil industry sources hopes that a new Iraqi government will be allowed to open tenders on oil exploitations, maintenance and sales that would well go to either local companies in Iraq or international companies like Malaysia’s national petroleum company, Petronas.

“It is however clear that the U.S. want to run the show in Iraq. It is imposing its own retired generals to form a new Iraqi government, will have its army to police the streets of Iraq and U.S. companies to offer services in the country of Saddam,” said Ramli.

He told IslamOnline.net that those other countries, including Britain, France and Russia will only be granted bits and pieces of contracts and that other countries like Malaysia and Indonesia or Saudi Arabia will not have a chance to share the spoils in Iraq.

“It will be a non-Muslim affair, a U.S. affair in the business deals in Iraq and this will definitely give the U.S. an upper hand to dictate OPEC and the Arab world,” he asserted.

“The U.S. will maintain the ‘military phase’, allowing chaos and instability to reign for a few years in order to prevent both the U.N. and the International community to interfere in Iraq,” said Ramli.

On the other hand, Dr Qurtubi said the U.S. would not have invaded Iraq in a very undemocratic way to supposedly install “democracy” in that country if its war did not have an economic dimension.

“Dominating the OPEC by controlling oil prices on the world market will be a tool that the U.S. could use to run international politics, that will make the U.S. a real super power with both military might and economic control on world markets,” added Ramli, commenting on the fears expressed by Qurtubi in Indonesia.

Qurtubi added that such a policy by the U.S. will have deep implications in Indonesia for example, where the International Monetary Fund (IMF) forces the increase in oil and fuel prices, dictating the lives of the poor and needy.

The IMF would need to force oil price hike in countries like Indonesia and others using its recipe for economic recovery in order to guarantee that its loans are repaid by the recipient nations, Ramli said to IslamOnline.net.

The U.S. will then dictate the lives of the people around the world if it keeps Iraq within the OPEC and increases Iraq’s production of oil.

“There are two school of thoughts now in the U.S., one urging the President of the United States to pull Iraq out of the OPEC and one insisting that Iraq should remain an OPEC member,” argued Dr Qurtubi.