By Ahmed Mousa Jiyad.
Any opinions expressed are those of the author, and do not necessarily reflect the views of Iraq Business News.
The Ministry of Oil: Reduced Transparency and the Return of Deplorable Secrecy
Slowly but surely an environment of shrinking transparency at the Ministry of Oil is becoming increasingly visible, deepening and damaging, indicating a strong return to deplorable secrecy and a pre-2003 style of management and egoism.
And while the country is facing two economic challenges: OPEC quota and 2017 Budget, the Ministry took a questionable U-turn by blocking all and every data and information on actual oil production, oil exports, oil revenues, oil prices and domestic oil and gas consumption.
This evidence-based and reality-check contribution aims at attracting the attention of the highest government authorities, especially the Prime Minister; the Parliament, the “Transparency-defenders” including civil society organization and all oil professional among others to confront fully, strongly and effectively this very regrettable and alarming development at the Ministry, and put an end to it before it gets worse and spreads.
Those responsible for such reversal of transparency at the Ministry should be identified, held accountable and forced to change course.
Please click here to download Ahmed Mousa Jiyad’s full report.
Mr Jiyad is an independent development consultant, scholar and Associate with the former Centre for Global Energy Studies (CGES), London. He was formerly a senior economist with the Iraq National Oil Company and Iraq’s Ministry of Oil, Chief Expert for the Council of Ministers, Director at the Ministry of Trade, and International Specialist with UN organizations in Uganda, Sudan and Jordan. He is now based in Norway (Email: mou-jiya(at)online.no, Skype ID: Ahmed Mousa Jiyad). Read more of Mr Jiyad’s biography here.
Updating
The Ministry of Oil posted today on its website the quantities of exported oil for November. But no export price per barrel and no export revenues (total and per export outlets) were provided. Moreover, export of oil and revenues for October 2016 are still missing.
It is worth mentioning that the Arabic translation of my article initiated by Mr. Ahmed Haji Rashid, the Moqarir (Secretary) of the Finance Committee/ the Iraqi Parliament and was circulated among all members of the said Committee and many other members of the Parliament. It was translated by Dr. Mohammed Mohammed, member of the Finance Committee.
Ahmed Mousa Jiyad,
Iraq/ Development Consultancy & Research,
Norway.
1 Dec 2016