» Home » Business News Iraq Directory Services Plans Subscription Contact us Site Map Help About Iraq Iraqi lawmakers study federal role in managing oil resources July 02, 2005 Iraqi lawmakers are likely to use a new constitution to mandate a new federal government with responsibility for production and management of the country's vast oil reserves, along with the distribution of the resulting wealth to the population, a leading member of the interim government said yesterday. Hussain Al Shahristani, the deputy speaker of Iraq's National Assembly, said that solution of what to do with Iraq's massive oil potential would help relieve tension in Kirkuk, the oil-rich and ethnically mixed northern city that Kurds want to annex as their capital. Because Kirkuk was such a sensitive issue it was a miniature Iraq with its ethnic and religious communities living together if the federal authorities handled the oil reserves for the whole country, that would reduce tension among those competing communities in Kirkuk and would help stabilise the situation, Al Shahristani told reporters after speaking at a debate on the future of Iraqi oil at the London School of Economics. With proven reserves of around 112 billion barrels, but current production of just 2 million per day, Iraq has the potential to remain one of the world's greatest oil producers for some years. A major question facing lawmakers has been how to distribute the resulting wealth among Iraq's largely impoverished population. Those reserves at today's current prices would be valued at perhaps $10 trillion (Dh36.8 trillion) and that would be translated into about $2 million (Dh7.36 million) per Iraqi family if properly managed, Al Shahristani said. There was wide agreement among the 275-member National Assembly, which must draft a new constitution by August 15, that a federal government should control the oil reserves, distributing the proceeds to local authorities in proportion to each region's population, he said. Some of the proceeds would be reserved for a so-called development fund to reserve some of the funds for distribution to the neediest parts of the country. They were really in the initial stages of the discussions and he could not predict how firmly it was going to be retained in the constitution, Al Shahristani said. But from the debate that had been going on in the National Assembly that was the picture that one came up with the oil production and the oil reserves management by a federal government, who took those revenues and disperses them to the different (regional) governments in proportion to their population. It was an acceptable solution by all parties in parliament. Source: Iraqi Media Network © 2002-2004 Iraq Directory - All Rights Reserved