Sunni group decries KRG, Hunt Oil deal

BAGHDAD, Oct. 18 (UPI) -- The Association of Muslim Scholars in Iraq has issued a rebuke of the Iraqi Kurdistan oil deal with U.S.-based Hunt Oil.

The group, which globalsecurity.org calls “the highest Sunni authority in Iraq,” says the Kurdistan Regional Government deal with Hunt Oil, signed early last month, will pilfer Iraq’s vast oil wealth.

The AMS has also issued statements against a proposed national oil law.

In a statement obtained by United Press International, the AMS “warns the signatories to these contracts and the companies who are their counterpart, of the results of these deeds … that all the wealth in the land which God bequeathed to Iraq is the property of the people from its north to its south, and that no other party has a right to sign any contracts and or agreements which are contrary to its will.”

The KRG has signed nearly a dozen oil deals with private oil firms. Frustrated by a lack of movement in Baghdad on a national oil law, the KRG passed its own regional law in August, and the Hunt deal was the first of three oil deals it has signed since.

Hunt, however, is the first U.S. company to sign a deal, irking the U.S. government, which is trying to bolster the fledgling central government.

Parliament has been unable to reach consensus on the national oil law. Lawmakers are stuck on competing demands regarding how much access foreign and private oil companies should have to the currently nationalized oil reserves, as well as the power sharing of the federal, regional and provincial governments in controlling the sector.

The central government has called the KRG deals illegal and warns it about acting unilaterally.

The AMS says the Hunt deal is for land that falls outside the official KRG territory, a claim made by former Iraqi Oil Minister Issam al-Chalabi.

“This will be considered a very serious matter from a political point of view between the central government and the KRG,” Chalabi told the Middle East Economic Survey.