Iraq signs Massive Oil Deal With China

I For One Would Like to Welcome Our Communist Overlords

While the world was busy with Broken-Watergate, the highly sought-after first Iraqi oil contracts were signed between the Ministry of Oil and the PRC to develop. From The Guardian:

The cabinet has approved a service contract to develop and produce the Adhab oilfield between the (Iraqi) Northern Oil Company and a Chinese company, according to terms initialled by both sides," government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh said in a statement. The Iraqi government recently announced renegotiated terms of the oil deal with the Chinese National Petroleum Company (CNPC), which was originally signed in 1997. The deal marks the first major oil contract with a foreign firm for Iraq.

Iraq's mostly undeveloped oil fields are speculated to have the second-largest reserves in the world, and their entire economy is primarily dependent upon the export of crude (currently around 2 million barrels/day). While it's good that international companies now feel that security has improved enough to invest, and that China is doing business with a legitimate democracy as opposed to the genocide-enablers in the Sudanese government, it seems as though the Western world is missing out.

American companies are so terrified of the "blood for oil" label, as the New York Times explains, that executives are dragging their feet in doing business with Iraq. There's also the matter of the Hydrocarbon Law, which still remains unresolved in the Iraqi government. China is taking a considerable risk, but the improvement in infrastructure will greatly benefit the Iraqis and provide new economic opportunity and a stabilization of the Baghdad government. All the while America imports oil from notorious human-rights abuser, Saudi Arabia, and the country run by an asshole dictator, Venezuela. You know, the blood of their oppressed citizens for our oil.