BAGHDAD, 25 May 2003 — Iraqis took more steps toward rebuilding the country yesterday, with an announcement that oil sales would restart soon, the choosing of a key city council and the payment of the first wages since the war to key workers.
Thamir Ghadhban, the director of the Oil Ministry and Iraq’s de facto oil minister, said Iraq would be back in the oil market within two to three weeks, after 13 years of sanctions were lifted on Thursday by the UN Security Council.
The United Nations gave the United States and Britain broad powers to run Iraq and its oil industry, and to use revenues to reconstruct the country.
“It will take a few weeks but we should be producing 1.3 million to 1.5 million barrels per day by the middle of next month,” Ghadhban said. Iraq has the world’s second largest oil reserves.
Buoyed by the prospect of income soon, the US administration paid the first state wages since the war.
It doled out dinars bearing Saddam Hussein’s face to thousands of electricity workers who, with cables and equipment regularly stolen, still struggle to restore power to Baghdad, six weeks after the former president was ousted.
Meanwhile, US construction giant Bechtel said on Friday it would consider qualified Arab firms, including ones from Iraq, as it carves up millions of dollars in contracts for rebuilding the country. Thousands of companies have pressed their case for a share in the reconstruction but many smaller firms, among them Arab businesses, say they fear losing out to big US rivals.
Jack Shaheen, Bechtel Corporation senior vice president and manager of operations, said contractors from the Gulf and Middle East regions had proved they could compete with firms from around the world, and the field was open to all.
“They’ve demonstrated their ability. They have been doing this for years,” Shaheen told Reuters on the sidelines of an investment conference that drew top Arab financial officials and business people. “There is no shortage of talent in the Gulf, in the Middle East.”
Bechtel was chosen by the US Agency for International Development (USAID) as the prime contractor to rebuild Iraq after the US-led war in a deal that could be worth up to $680 million over 18 months. The company has said it expects to farm out at least 90 percent of the rebuilding work.
European and Asian firms turned out in force on Friday at a meeting held in London by privately-owned Bechtel, to press their case for Iraqi contracts. That follows a similar gathering in Washington, and the road show will move to Kuwait on May 28.
“In my experience in the Gulf there are very, very capable contractors here in the Gulf, in the Middle East,” Shaheen said, pointing to the company’s long history in the Middle East.
Bechtel is at work on a $1.7 billion project to build an aluminum smelter in Bahrain and a $1.5 billion project to expand an airport in Saudi Arabia. It also has projects in Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt.
The 105-year-old company was also involved in extinguishing oil-well fires in Kuwait following the 1991 Gulf War.
Shaheen said Bechtel had already begun dredging work on the Iraqi port of Umm Qasr, which British military authorities this month handed over to an interim council of 12 Iraqis, using equipment from Bahrain.
Vincent Battle, US ambassador to Beirut, said on Friday the Lebanese could bring experience to work in post-war Iraq. “The Lebanese private sector is well-placed to play that role. They have been in Iraq before the difficulties,” he said.
