Not A War For Oil, Nope.

Where would anyone get that idea? That's just silly.

Texas' Hunt Oil Co. and Kurdistan's regional government said Saturday they've signed a production-sharing contract for petroleum exploration in northern Iraq, the first such deal since the Kurds passed their own oil and gas law in August.

A Hunt subsidiary, Hunt Oil Co. of the Kurdistan Region, will begin geological survey and seismic work by the end of 2007 and hopes to drill an exploration well in 2008, the parties said in a news release. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Now, one might be worried that having the Kurds make deals with foreign oil companies could undermine efforts to get the central Iraqi government in Baghdad to settle the controversies about a national oil law. A deal like this one seems like it might make it harder to build a coherent nation, and achieve the "victory" that fella in the White House keeps going on about, where a stable, secure, unified Iraq can stand on its own. Should we look for any expression of concern from the White House about this deal?

Josh Marshall at TPM points us to the bio of Hunt Oil's CEO, Ray L. Hunt:

With respect to government service, in October 2001 and again in January 2006, Mr. Hunt was appointed by President George W. Bush to the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board in Washington, D.C.

So, then, I guess that would be a "no".

A Texas oil man well known to President Bush now has a deal for Iraqi oil that he never would have had with Saddam in power. Huh. How 'bout that?