The U.S. State Department denied charges Thursday by a House committee that it inappropriately encouraged a Texas-based oil company to strike an exploration deal with the Kurdish government in northern Iraq...
The U.S. State Department denied charges Thursday by a House committee that it inappropriately encouraged a Texas-based oil company to strike an exploration deal with the Kurdish government in northern Iraq.
Hunt Oil Co.'s contract with the Kurds, reached last September, angered Iraq's central government in Baghdad, which said deals with foreign companies should not be signed until lawmakers agreed how the nation's oil revenues would be divided. The issue remains unresolved and continues to be among the most contentious within the Iraqi Parliament.
State Department spokesman Sean McCormack told reporters the department advised all U.S. oil companies, including Hunt Oil, against making deals in Iraq before passage of a national hydrocarbons law because it would aggravate political tensions.
If individuals had encouraged the deal, their actions would have been contrary to official administration policy, McCormack said.
But according to an investigation by the House Oversight and Government Affairs Committee, led by Democratic Rep. Henry Waxman, there is no evidence that the administration tried to dissuade the Texas company. Further, the committee's review of e-mail messages and other documents show that in some cases, State Department and other administration officials seemed to encourage the deal.
In one instance, a State Department regional coordinator wrote in an e-mail that he was glad to hear of Hunt Oil's efforts.
Another State Department official stationed in Iraq notified Hunt Oil of a second business opportunity and offered to provide additional information if they wanted it.
The messages would have run counter to public statements made by State Department officials in Washington at the time. Deputy State Department spokesman Tom Casey told reporters in September that the administration saw the deal as unhelpful. In October, the department's chief liaison to Congress, Jeffrey Bergner, told lawmakers that the administration warned Hunt Oil that such contracts would "needlessly elevate tensions" between the largely autonomous Kurds and Iraq's Arab central government.
According to notes taken by Hunt Oil officials at a June 2007 meeting with U.S. officials in Iraq, the company was told specifically that the United States had no policy on the contracts.
