Captain's Quarters -

The Iraqi government faces many issues, but perhaps none as intractable as oil revenues. The proper division of monies from oil production has plagued the National Assembly and sectarian relations since the end of the Saddam Hussein tyranny. The Kurds and the Shi'ites, freed from Saddam's grip, want to use the oil revenue from their sectors to directly benefit themselves. The lack of such resources in Sunni-controlled territory fuels the Sunni insurgents, afraid that they will be left destitute in a federal system.

Now, however, it appears that the Sunnis may have more resources than first thought. The New York Times reports that Western engineers have discovered significant fields of oil and natural gas in Anbar:

In a remote patch of the Anbar desert just 20 miles from the Syrian border, a single blue pillar of flanges and valves sits atop an enormous deposit of oil and natural gas that would be routine in this petroleum-rich country except for one fact: this is Sunni territory.

Huge petroleum deposits have long been known in Iraq’s Kurdish north and Shiite south. But now, Iraq has substantially increased its estimates of the amount of oil and natural gas in deposits on Sunni lands after quietly paying foreign oil companies tens of millions of dollars over the past two years to re-examine old seismic data across the country and retrain Iraqi petroleum engineers.

The development is likely to have significant political effects: the lack of natural resources in the central and western regions where Sunnis hold sway has fed their disenchantment with the nation they once ruled. And it has driven their insistence on a strong central government, one that would collect oil revenues and spread them equitably among the country’s factions, rather than any division of the country along sectarian regional boundaries.

So far, the geologists and seismologists have not found anything comparable to the huge petroleum stores in the north and south of the country. They have found a series of smaller fields strung across western Iraq that would produce significant revenue, if the Sunnis could exploit them. It would take years to develop the infrastructure in Anbar and other Sunni regions, but once in place, it could provide the Sunnis with a significant revenue stream.

This discovery has importance far beyond the oil industry. The Sunnis have had little good economic news after Saddam's fall. The desperation has fueled the insurgencies, and their terrorism has plagued operational production facilities in the Shi'ite south. If the Sunnis have their own oil resources, the insurgents could be convinced to lay down arms and instead build the necessary infrastructure to generate the revenue -- a task that the US would only be too happy to assist.

That would marginalize the al-Qaeda elements even further in Anbar, where they face increasing tribal animosity thanks to their bloodthirsty track record. Oil revenues could convince the former Ba'athists and other native insurgents that they can survive in a federal system -- in fact, may do better in a federal system than in a unitary system where they would always be a minority. They would not be destined for poverty, dependent on the questionable kindness of their Shi'ite and Kurdish cousins. It would also remove one of the stickiest issues facing the assembly and allow them to reach accord on constitutional decisions.

If the US and Iraqi government can convince the Sunnis to shift focus from their self-perceived victimhood and terrorism to oil production and relative wealth, oil could become Anbar's miracle crop.