Iraqi Oil Flows Once More
A couple things you will notice about this article about the resumption of oil pumping, export and production:

1) No mention of OPEC....is iraq going to take into account the wishes of OPEC? or are they going to simply fall out of the consortium? I would assume that since there is no mention of OPEC when considering the amount of oil to produce that OPEC is a non-factor. this is intriguing...without Iraq in OPEC, oil experts believe that it will fall apart as an effective price fixer of oil. Good news for the west.

2) The reconstruction fund: all the oil revenues will go towards a reconstruciton for Iraq to repair the country. One thing i'm not too keen on is the 'reconstruction fund' being used to hire Halliburton, cheney's old company, to reconstruct iraq. there is all kinds of justification for allowing an american firm reconstruct iraq i suppose..in particular halliburton is one of the few companies in the US, or the world for that matter, that has proper security clearance for these type of operations. but it strikes me as a little too close having the former CEO halliburton as the VP of the US, and now having halliburton score all kinds of sweet contracts in Iraq. something stinks.