Privatizing Iraqi oil? Iraq Study Group Co-Chair Lee Hamilton questioned

Transcript

Sam Husseini: Mr. Hamilton, can you clarify one of your recommendations, number 63, which called on the US to “assist the Iraqi leaders to reorganize the national oil industry as a commercial enterprise and to encourage investment in Iraq’s oil sector by the international community and by international energy companies. Are you calling for some sort of privitization?

Lee Hamilton: Oil of course is the critical asset in Iraq. It furnishes a very large percentage of the GDP of Iraq. It furnishes a huge percentage of the total revenues of the government. We recommend many things with regard to the oil industry. I think there are as many recommendations on oil as any other feature of it, and you have to look at them as a package. Okay, thank you.

[originally published on Washington Stakeout on Dec. 10, 2006; posted on posthaven Nov. 11, 2015]