After a 35 year wait, American and British oil corporations are on the verge of securing control of Iraq's vast oil reserves. Becca Fisher reveals how the unholy alliance of Big Oil, government and the IMF is getting closer to its goal of reconstructing the Iraqi state to gain secure oil supplies. The new law would allow foreign oil companies to sign long term contracts, giving them exclusive rights over Iraq's huge oil fields. Its very terms reflect the public opposition to privatisation in Iraq, as the proposed contracts carefully ensure that the state still owns the oil whilst the company controls production, secures huge rates of profit, and is immune from Iraqi state regulation. As former Iraqi oil minister, Ibrahim Bahr al-Uloum, puts it, 'The Iraqi oil sector needs privatisation but it's a cultural issue'[1]. The solution has been to disguise the plunder in this covert form of privatisation. As Professor Thomas Wälder, oil law expert at the University of Dundee, explains: 'The government can be seen to be running the show and the company can run it behind the camouflage of a legal title symbolising the assertion of national sovereignty.'[2]  Iraqi sovereignty in the oil industry can thus be removed under the guise of state ownership. This smokescreen operates on another level: the law itself is an instance of a wider removal of Iraqi sovereignty, under the guise of democracy. [MORE]