IRAQI OIL AND THICK SUNNI SKULLS

Late last month, just as the Senate was voting 75 to 23 for a  "sense of the Senate" resolution calling for Iraq to be divided into Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish "federal regions" with a weak national government to "facilitate sharing of oil revenue," eight tanker trucks arrived in Jordan with crude oil from Kirkuk in northern Iraq.

Not a single Senator noticed, nor made the ironic connection.  For the arrival of the tankers is a more important event than the Senators' vote of frustration.

Their frustration is understandable, for America is spending hundreds of billions of dollars on a country that could be making half a billion dollars a day in oil revenue, and can't get its governmental act together to produce it.

The frustration is nonetheless born of ignorance – nothing unusual for Senators.  Iraq could be producing six million barrels of oil a day from its present fields with fast investment in and security for its production infrastructure. 

Yet Iraq is right now and has been for some time exporting over two million barrels a day.  That's equal or close to such major oil exporters as Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Nigeria, or Venezuela.

Moreover, the oil revenues are being distributed by the Maliki government "rather equitably" throughout Iraq, according to Iraq expert (and ethnic Arab) Fouad Ajami.

Yet here's the problem – or rather the perceived problem.  The Sunnis used to have all the power in Iraq under Saddam and don't any longer.  What they also don't have is the oil, the big fields of which are either in Kurdish or Shia parts of Iraq.  Here's a map of those fields:

The Sunnis see all that vast blankness in the western half of the map, which is Sunni territory even though it's mostly empty desert, think "The Shias and Kurds have all the oil!," and are so scared they'll get screwed out of it they won't sign a formal oil revenue agreement.

Somehow, it hasn't penetrated thick Sunni skulls that all that blankness in their land may contain more oil than the rest of Iraq.

That blankness on the oil map is called the Western Deserts.  Saddam never allowed it to be explored – yet petroleum geologists believe it may contain up to and possibly more than 100 billion barrels of recoverable oil – recoverable at very low extraction costs.  After all, the area belongs to the same geological formation as do the oilfields of Saudi Arabia. 

The Sunnis could have more oil, and more oil money, than they know what to do with – if only they figured this out, and provided the incentives and safety/protection for Western oil companies to come and get it out of the ground for them.

They may just be about to do so.  That's why those tanker trucks from Kirkuk are so important. They are the first of many thousands. Take a look at Iraq and her neighbors, especially Jordan:

Kirkuk up there in Kurdistan is a long ways from the Jordanian border, and those tankers had to pass through a lot of Sunni-land (primarily Anbar Province) to get there.  The Sunnis are pacifying Anbar and are succeeding in kicking Al Qaeda out.

As the Sunnis see more and more tankers crossing their empty land with Kurdish oil, they will also see oil guys paying them visits.  When their brains finally go ka-ching!, they are going to look at the political map a little differently.

They'll want to buy as much influence in Baghdad as they can of course, but acknowledge the Shia majority (65% of Iraq vs. 15% Sunni) will retain the most power.  So they'll start getting real friendly with Jordan – Sunni Jordan.  Sunni moderate Jordan.  Resource-less, oil-less Jordan.  Jordan with a strong competent army. 

It won't be long before very rich Sunni Sheikhs from Anbar come a-courtin' on Jordan's porch with a bouquet of roses in one hand and a box not of chocolates but a lot of cash in the other.

Our impending victory in Iraq is not going to stabilize any political status quo in the Middle East.  Iraq is going to become very rich and very powerful.  Iraq's Sunnis are not going to be confined to 15% of that wealth and power.  If not in Baghdad, then elsewhere.  There are a lot of folks for sale in Amman and Damascus. 

Sunni skulls won't be thick for much longer.  The same can't be said for those in the Senate.  That's why they'll keep passing mindless resolutions oblivious to history and the history to come.