As security improves across Iraq, the business opportunities are growing. Iraq has the potential to become a major force in the regional economy in the way that it once was before Saddam drove the country into the ground.
Iraq's opportunity is clear: to use its energy wealth to bring about real improvements to the lives of orginary people, to build better public services rather than create a destructive war machine.
I was delighted to see a great British company like BP taking such a determined and active role in the recent oil bidding round. In awarding the vast Rumeilah field to BP and its Chinese partner, the Iraqis are recognising BP's cutting edge expertise and technical know-how and it is great to see BP joining Shell in playing a major role in working with Iraq and contributing to increased diversity of energy supplies.
The conspiracy theorists will no doubt rattle on that this is why we went to war. But the bidding round was designed and run by and for Iraqis and transparently so. The way it should be. BP won - good for them, good for Iraq and good for the UK.
Posted at 14:10 14 July 2009 by David Miliband | Comments[1]
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Posted by Andrewsib on July 16, 2009 at 03:13 AM BST #