I've already documented the plan before the war recommended in Cheney's Task Force Report, Strategic Energy Challenges for the 21st Century.
And the new Iraq oil law that we helped draw up was a key benchmark for the new Iraq government:
"The oil law was drafted in 2006, after the first post-Saddam permanent government was formed. Then
the Bush administration pushed it especially hard through 2007.
The law had three purposes. The first was to create a framework in which multinationals would have a primary role in developing Iraq’s oil industry, and to determine exactly the extent of that role, what rights they would have, and the extent of their powers. The second element was to clarify how that would work in an emerging federal system in Iraq. To put it simply: With whom would they sign contracts? Was it with the central government in Baghdad, or was it with regional governments—in particular, the only one that exists so far, the Kurdistan regional government?
The third element of the law was to essentially disempower parliament in relation to decisions around oil. . . . Since 1967 Iraq has had a law in place, No. 97, which said if the government were to sign contracts to develop oil fields and run them, the parliament would have to sign a specific piece of legislation to approve them. [In other words,] the parliament would have to say, “We support and agree with this contract and we give it validity in law.” That was still in force in 2003, and indeed in 2006. The government could legally sign contacts with foreign companies. But if it did so, it would have to get the OK from parliament for them to have any force. Therefore, the most important role of the oil law of 2006/2007 was not [so much] to allow contracts to be signed by multinationals, as that was already possible. It was to allow them [i.e., the contracts] to be signed without parliament having any oversight.
Incidentally, the importance of parliamentary oversight is that oil accounts for over ninety-five percent of government revenue. So it is quite reasonable for parliament to have some say in how that works.
So this was the oil law. The United States, Britain, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and other financial institutions wanted to see it passed as soon as possible once the permanent post-Saddam government was formed in May 2006. As soon as that happened, the United States and the Britain started to say, “your priority is going to be to pass the oil law.” I have documents from that period which make this very clear. They moved very quickly to draft an oil law in August 2006, and it basically delivered those three asks of it.
Getting this law passed in parliament became the major political priority of the United States."
The Unfinished Story of Iraq's Oil Law: An Interview with Greg Muttitt
