Exclusive: How Blair and BP "Lied" Over Iraqi Oil PDF Print E-mail
Michael Gillard, 18 April, 2011

TONY BLAIR and BP misled the public about the importance of securing lucrative oil contracts in the decision to invade Iraq, secret government documents reveal.

Shortly before the invasion in March 2003, Blair dismissed criticism that he was fighting a war for oil as an “absurd conspiracy theory”. BP had also denied holding specific talks with the government about oil opportunities once Saddam Hussein was toppled.

However, four months before the invasion, Baroness Symons, the then trade minister, told BP that the government believed British energy firms should be given a share of Iraq’s enormous oil and gas reserves as a reward for Blair’s military commitment to secret US plans for regime change.

Symons also agreed to lobby the Bush administration on BP’s behalf because the oil giant feared it was being “locked out” of secret “political deals” that Washington was striking ahead of the invasion with US, French and Russian governments and their energy firms.

The minute of the meeting with BP, BG (formerly British Gas) and Shell on 31 October 2002 said: “Baroness Symons agreed that it would be difficult to justify British companies losing out in Iraq in that way if the UK had itself been a conspicuous supporter of the US government throughout the crisis.”

The minister then promised to “report back to the companies before Christmas” on her lobbying efforts. She met BP again on 5 December.

The restricted documents describing these meetings on the road to war were released under the Freedom of Information Act to oil campaigner Greg Muttitt. “It was a five-year struggle to get them, but they provide evidence of what many of us suspected: that oil was at the centre of the Blair government's thinking on Iraq,” he said.

“Not for nothing was BP known as Blair Petroleum, but Baroness Symons’ attitude sounds more like something from the Nineteenth Century. Didn’t her officials point out that under the Hague and Geneva conventions it’s illegal to fight wars for resources?" added Muttitt, whose book, Fuel on the Fire, will be published later this week.

BP also gave a presentation to one of Blair’s economic advisers on 6 November 2002 during a discussion at the Foreign Office about opportunities in Iraq “post regime change”. The government minutes record that: “Iraq is the big oil prospect. BP is desperate to get in there and anxious that political deals should not deny them the opportunity.”

BP was concerned that if Washington allowed TotalFinaElf’s contact with Saddam Hussein to stand after the invasion it would make the French conglomerate the world’s leading oil company. BP told the government it was willing to take “big risks” to get a share of the Iraqi reserves, the second largest in the world after Saudi Arabia.

Weeks later on 6 February 2003 Blair told a television audience: “The oil conspiracy theory is honestly one of the most absurd when you analyse it. The fact is that, if the oil that Iraq has were our concern I mean we could probably cut a deal with Saddam tomorrow in relation to the oil. It's not the oil that is the issue, it is the weapons.”

Last night, Blair dismissed the content of official documents from his own time in office and denied oil was a consideration in the decison to invade Iraq. His spokesman said: “This is the stuff of ludicrous conspiracy theory without basis in fact whatsoever.”

Symons, 59, who also served as defence minister and Middle East minister in the Blair government, later took up an advisory post with a UK merchant bank that cashed in on post war Iraq reconstruction contracts. Last month she severed links as an unpaid advisor to Libya's National Economic Development Board after Colonel Gadaffi started firing on protestors.

BP declined to comment.

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