WASHINGTON, Sept. 21 (UPI) -- Hunt Oil is defending its new deal with the Iraqi Kurdish region amid concern from Washington it could undercut a federal process.
The Kurdistan Regional Government, meanwhile, says the deal gives the federal government a needed “kick up the backside.”
“We’re a privately held company. We do not make it a practice to discuss our business dealings with anyone except the involved parties, and in this case the U.S. government is not an involved party,” Hunt Oil spokeswoman Jeanne Phillips told The Dallas Morning News.
The KRG announced the Hunt deal Sept. 8. It is a production-sharing contract aimed at exploring potential oil and natural gas lands in the Dahuk province.
Hunt Chief Executive Officer Ray Hunt is a friend of the Bush administration and a fundraiser for it and the Republican Party, sparking cries of foul play. He also sits on the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, which presumably would discuss issues relating to Iraq.
“I knew nothing about the deal,” President Bush said at a news conference Thursday. “I need to know exactly how it happened. To the extent that it does undermine the ability for the government to come up with an oil revenue-sharing plan that unifies the country, obviously I’m -- if it undermines that, I’m concerned.”
The Iraqi government has been unable to move forward two key laws in the oil sector: a revenue-sharing law that would decide how the oil funds are redistributed; and an oil law that would decide the role of the federal, regional and provincial governments in the oil sector, as well as to what extent the private sector will be allowed in.
The Hunt deal isn’t the first the KRG has signed, but it is the first with a U.S. firm and is among the group of deals Iraq Oil Minister Hussain al-Shahristani has called “illegal.”
Qubad Talabani, the KRG’s representative to Washington and the son of Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, defended the deal as progress inside Iraq.
“This deal didn’t undermine the oil law per se,” he said. “It will give it a good kick up the backside to get the process moving forward."
