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Reports From Iraq > Wed., Feb. 25, 2004
Pacifica Reports From Iraq
Iraq's Oil; Turkey and America
Under the terms of a deal signed this month Turkish oil
refineries like this one at Ceyhan will become property
of a company from the only company from Tataristan that's
also on the NYSE. |
How greedy can Washington get when it comes to Middle East
oil? Apparently the combined efforts of the Bush Administration
and Wall Street don't stop with oil-rich countries like Iraq,
Iran, and Saudi Arabia.
'The war in Iraq was all about oil and American imperialism,'
charges Mustafa Ozgen of the Turkish oil workers union Petrol-iS.
'But that imperialism doesnt stop at the borders of Iraq.
George Bush wants all of Iraqs oil and Turkey buys a lot of
it. So America had to get rid of its competition.'
And so it did.
Using the strong arm of the International Monetary Fund,
Washington still forced the Turkish government to sell the
nation's oil company, Tupras, and this month a big multinational
signed on the dotted line.
The mulinational in question, Tatneft, doesn't look like
an American company at first glance.
Court documents here say the company buying Tupras is a
Russian one fromTataristan in Central Asia in partnership
with a German company called Efremov Synthetic Rubber. But
closer examination reveals Tataristan's Tatneft to be listed
on the New York Stock Exchange with such Wall Street investors
as Barclays and Goldman Sachs. The situation is even murkier
for Germany's Efremov Synthetic Rubber
'Our bureau in Germany went to the headquarers of this firm,'
says Ihsan Charalan is a collumnist for Turkey's left-wing
Evrensel newspaper. 'It was the upstairs floor of an apartment
building and the people in the neighborhood said the office
had a telephone and nothing else.'
The deal is show shady, in fact, that Turkish trade unionists
may get some unlikely help from Wall Street.
One of Tatneft's American investors is considering joining
the union in an effort to block the merger. The investment
firm Imangement Service Ltd, which holds 5 million dollars
worth of Tatneft shares, says the Tatar company has failed
to follow both Russian and American financial disclosure requirements.
Those statements were echoed by the US Securities and Exchange
commission which in June came close to suspending Tatneft's
membership on the New York Stock Exchange when the company
failed to meet reporting requirments enacted in the wake of
the Enron scandal.
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