Report Favors Giving Iraqis, Not U.S., Control of Oil

With many critics convinced that oil is the ultimate objective of U.S. war planning, pressure is growing to give the United Nations an oversight role over the Iraqi oilmen. Many experts believe that it should be up to the Iraqis to decide how to rebuild their battered industry -- and which foreign companies would get to take part.

That view was emphatically endorsed by a panel of experts in a report issued Wednesday by the Council on Foreign Relations and Rice University's Baker Institute, and it is believed to represent the thinking of many U.S. officials.

"A lot of us have confidence in people who were professionals in the Iraqi oil industry and left the country, and in people who are still there," said Baker Institute energy analyst Amy Myers Jaffe, who contributed to the report. "The idea that there's nobody qualified in Iraq so we're going to have to bring in the Americans, that's just not the case."

But that conclusion is not unanimous. According to sources familiar with the discussions, some Bush administration officials have proposed that the United States assume control of Iraq's war-ravaged petroleum industry to make sure the oil continues to flow and the money it brings in -- about $30 million a day -- isn't misspent.

The debate underscores one of the touchiest aspects of the administration's preparations for a possible war in Iraq. Although President Bush and other U.S. officials insist that they are motivated by concern about Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's efforts to develop weapons of mass destruction, polls indicate that many people in the U.S. and elsewhere believe that the war, if it happens, is really about oil.

"This is a very sensitive issue," said John Lichtblau, chairman of the Petroleum Industry Research Foundation in New York. "There is a lot of talk that oil may be at the bottom of the U.S. motivation to go in there. That's exactly what the U.S. government doesn't want people to think."

The deliberations over oil also reflect a fundamental fault line within the administration, officials say.