التحديات التي تواجه مسودة قانون النفط والغاز الجديد في العراق

Abstract

The last century of the Iraiq contemporary history witnessed seven distractive wars which happened in the following years : ( 1914-1918), 1920, 1941, ( 1980-1988), 1991, nineties ( 1993, 1996, 1998 ), and 2003. During these wars, oil was a direct and indirect reason for their eruption. In spit of all those wars, Iraq was the head of global states which produced and exported oil throughout the last eighty years. Since 1927 till 1972 the oil sector was run by two stages: The first stage was by the domination of foreign companies on the oil management, along with giving a rate to Iraqi government. This stage continued from 1927 - 1972. But the second stage reflected the direct management of oil sector by Iraqi state. This stage continued from 1972 – 2003.The (suggested) New Law of Oil and Gas represents the beginning of the third stage of managing oil sector in Iraq . This stage reflects the response to new stage requirements that Iraq passes after the seventh war happened since 2003up till now. According to the numbers of Iraqi ministry of oil , the recorded oil reservations amount (114) billion barrel of raw oil and the prospective reservations amount (145) billion barrel. Iraq has great recoded reservations of gas amount (3.100) billion cubic meters and prospective reservations amount (4.350) billion cubic meters. The (suggested) Draft of the New Law of Oil and Gas depends on many articles in the new Iraqi constitution especially article ( 111, 112, 115) . The contrast in illustrating the constitution articles represents the first challenge that faced the draft of the new law. The challenge is on the responsibility of running the recent and future fields. The second challenge is represented by giving the new Iraqi constitution the priority to the region and province laws against the centralization laws of managing and investing the oil sector. Beside there is another challenge which relates to the mechanism of investments and how to deal with foreign companies. All these challenges create different reactions and criticisms to the suggested law and the argument is still between the executive and legislative institutions in Iraq.