BAGHDAD, 4 May 2003 — The US-led coalition yesterday named an Iraqi Oil Ministry official as the nation’s new oil chief, pledging Iraq’s vast reserves would be used to benefit its people.
Thamir Ghadhban, the ministry’s director of planning before the war, will have interim control over Iraq’s battered oil sector, the main source of revenue to rebuild the country after the ouster of Saddam Hussein.
But the coalition said it had also created an advisory board to be led by Philip Carroll, an American who is the former CEO of Shell Oil. The United States has repeatedly insisted it will not take over Iraq’s oil wealth. Ghadhban, a geologist, has been given control over day-to-day management, marketing and sales, effectively making him interim oil minister until a new government is formed. The advisory board will work on policy planning.
“We are committed 100 percent that the Iraqi oil and hydrocarbons wealth is for the Iraqi people,” Ghadhban told reporters. “I am confident that I’ll do all my best with my colleagues to improve the situation.”
He has been given the title of chief executive officer of the interim management team, said a statement from the Pentagon’s Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance (ORHA).
“In the first days following the fall of the Saddam regime, Ghadhban voluntarily stepped into an ad hoc and effective leadership role in the ministry,” it said.
Tim Cross, the British deputy to Jay Garner, the retired US general in charge of rebuilding the country under ORHA, insisted the people would profit from Iraq’s oil, the world’s second-largest proven reserves after Saudi Arabia.
“We want to have a fully transparent oil ministry where we can see the oil wealth delivered to the Iraqi people, and when you look around this country ... that wealth is desperately needed,” Cross said. “We can build on this process quickly,” he said.
Iraq’s oil reserves are the only guaranteed domestic source of cash for reconstruction. The country sits on an estimated 112 billion barrels of proven reserves. Officials say Iraq’s current production is around 125,000 barrels per day (bpd). They said they hope to better the pre-war output of roughly 2.5 million bpd by the end of the year.
Mazen Jumaa, a member of Saddam’s Baath party, had been the highest ranking Oil Ministry official until Ghadhban’s appointment. An official said Jumaa has been “asked to stay at home until his situation is resolved.”
The coalition last week announced the arrest of Iraq’s former oil minister, Amer Rashid, said to have been a core figure in the former regime’s weapons programs.
ORHA said Carroll’s deputy on the advisory board would be Fadhel Othman, a former chairman of Iraq’s State Oil Marketing Organization before he left Iraq in the 1980s to live in neighboring Turkey.
The oil advisor to the US administration in Iraq, Gary Vogler, told reporters after the meeting that Carroll was expected to reach Iraq in about a week.