Satterfield: Iraq oil law will pass

WASHINGTON, March 28 (UPI) -- The Bush administration remains optimistic Iraq will approve a law governing its oil and natural gas despite growing opposition.

Ambassador David Satterfield, senior adviser to U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and the State Department's Iraq coordinator, said a deal reached last month on the framework for the draft hydrocarbons law meets two of three points necessary for the military "surge" to be successful.

The added troops "cannot by and of itself achieve lasting security for Baghdad or Iraq as a whole," Satterfield said Tuesday at a forum at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

He said it needs to be coupled with political reconciliation, economic development and diplomatic engagement.

Kurdish and federal government negotiators ended nearly a year of deadlock and agreed in part to the law, which will govern Iraq's oil and determine revenue sharing. Not all the details have been worked out, something necessary before Parliament takes up the measure.

The law won't affect current production, which is struggling amid war, sabotage and attacks, shortages of electricity and historic degradation after years of sanctions and misuse by Saddam Hussein.

It will set the framework for investments in Iraq's oil, which at 115 billion barrels of proven reserves is the third-most in the world.

The Iraqi Accordance Front and the Iraqi National Slate, led by former Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, have come out against the law.

So has the Iraqi Federation of Oil Unions, which can shut down most of Iraq's 2 million barrels per day production if it wanted to.

This could spoil any progress the Bush administration has pointed to as one of the benchmarks for continuing the support for the current Iraqi government.

"I believe that this is a benchmark that will be met. It will be met at the timeframe which I think will be defined in terms of weeks and months and not longer period," Satterfield said.