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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Kenneth V. McNutt who wrote (663628)	12/3/2004 7:34:03 AM
From: DuckTapeSunroof	Respond to of 769670

Message 20820393 Re: 'Texas' Names of the major corporations and individuals who were granted the 'easy profits' of legal permission to sell Iraq's oil under the 'oil for food' program have all been made public in the UN reports, and covered in the press (and posted on this site several times before). New York oil trader Ben Pollner, head of Taurus Oil, investigators say he handled several billion dollars worth of the transactions now under investigation. Marc Rich had one of the contracts. Coastal, (founded by the Houston entrepreneur and oil mogul Oscar Wyatt, now part of El Paso), is detailed in a formal Iraqi government tally of secret payments made from September 2000 to December 2003, when steps were taken by U.S. and British officials to stop the surcharges. Coastal, is shown as having paid $201,877 in surcharges. It is a small piece of the $228 million in surcharges on oil sales that a CIA report released last week said Saddam had collected, largely from Russian companies. Wyatt, a former drill-bit salesman in South Texas who built a hydra-headed energy empire, said through a spokeswoman on Monday that he had no knowledge of Coastal paying any surcharges. A spokeswoman for the company El Paso, which acquired Coastal in 2001, declined to comment, citing a grand jury subpoena the company had received from federal court in New York. The inclusion of Coastal on the list - prepared by postwar officials from the Iraq State Oil Marketing Organization - is one indication of the special relationship that Wyatt and Coastal had with Iraq, dating back three decades. Wyatt, 80, acknowledged Monday through a spokeswoman that he had traveled to Baghdad as recently as early 2003, as the United States was preparing for war, to meet with officials in Saddam's government. He declined to disclose the purpose of the visit. acepilots.com Etc., etc., etc. During the first seven months of 2002, the United States imported an average of 566,000 barrels a day from Iraq, with big importers including ExxonMobil, ChevronTexaco, Valero Energy and Koch Petroleum, according to the Energy Department. acepilots.com U.S. Firms In Duelfer Report IHT- U.S. firms received oil-for-food vouchers WASHINGTON Major American oil companies and a Texas oil investor were among those who received lucrative vouchers that enabled them to buy Iraqi oil under the UN oil-for-food program, according to a report prepared by the chief arms inspector for the CIA. The 918-page report says that four U.S. oil companies - Chevron, Mobil, Texaco and Bay Oil - and three individuals, including Oscar Wyatt Jr. of Houston, were given vouchers and got 111 million barrels of oil between them from 1996 to 2003. The vouchers allowed them to profit by selling the oil or the right to trade it. The other individuals, whose names appeared on a secret list maintained by the former Iraqi government, were Samir Vincent of Annandale, Virginia, and Shakir Al-Khafaji of West Bloomfield, Michigan, according to the report by the inspector, Charles Duelfer. The fact that these companies and individuals received oil from Iraq does not mean that they did anything illegal, experts on the program said. Such allocations may have been proper if the individuals and companies received appropriate UN approval. In interviews on Friday, spokesmen for the oil companies and for El Paso Corp., which assumed control of the assets of the company once run by Wyatt, said the transactions had been legal. But each confirmed that they had received subpoenas from a U.S. grand jury in New York, which is investigating "transactions in oil of Iraqi origin" as part of the oil-for-food program, according to a U.S. financial filing by El Paso. acepilots.com