Iraq has already promised mainly French, Russian and Chinese companies, led by TotalFinaElf and Lukoil, the prime choice of developing the country's massive but neglected oil resources, although questions have been raised whether such arrangements would be honoured in a post-Saddam Iraq.
Crippling UN sanctions have starved the Iraqi oil sector of the $US30 billion to $US40 billion in investment calculated to be necessary to rebuild and develop the country's oil deposits, stirring oil companies' appetite for a piece of the expected action.
US oil firms have been notably absent, having been excluded from Iraq's huge oil reserves since the end of the 1980s when Washington-Baghdad relations deteriorated.
Sizing up Iraq's oil resources, the US Department of Energy says in a recent briefing that Iraq's oil production costs are among the lowest in the world, "making it a highly attractive oil prospect."
One US thinks believes prolong legal conflicts over contracts could delay the development of Iraqi oil and so a UN-mandated legal framework for vetting pre-hostility exploration agreements would be advisable.
