6 May 2003
The US-led Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance in Iraq (ORHA) on Saturday announced the appointment of the director general of planning at the Iraqi oil ministry, Thamer al-Ghadban, as chief executive of the interim management team for the Iraqi oil sector.
It did not set a timeframe for the interim management of the oil ministry and companies under its auspices, which al-Ghadban will also be in charge of, including the Iraqi State Oil Marketing Organization (Somo).
ORHA also announced for the first time the official appointment of Philip Carroll, former director and CEO of Shell Oil, and Fadhil Othman, former head of Somo, as chairman and vice chairman, respectively, of an advisory board for the oil sector.
Carroll is arriving in Baghdad in a week. ORHA officials say it’s too early to define the advisory board’s role or state when it will hold its first meeting since the appointment of other members of the board is not yet complete.
The choice of al-Ghadban to lead the Iraqi sector was made last Friday, International Oil Daily learned from sources close to the discussions. At a Saturday meeting, two officials from ORHA, Tim Cross, British deputy to the head of ORHA Jay Garner, and Gary Vogler, senior oil advisor to Garner, made the announcement to 22 directors general who head the seven departments of the oil ministry and 15 state companies that report to the ministry. Al-Ghadban confirmed in an interview that he was offered the position on Friday and accepted it.
“What we wanted to have in place is a man who understands the business and the people who work with him, and I think we got a good choice,” Cross said after the meeting.
Vogler, who met with al-Ghadban twice last week, agreed. “Thamer is well respected within the industry and within Iraq. The selection committee just felt he’s the overwhelming choice for this job,” he said.
A geologist and graduate of a British university in the 1960s, al-Ghadban started working in the southern oil fields and became director general of the oil ministry’s planning department in the 1980s. Although he comes from a traditionally Baathist family from the area of Karbala, he had his differences with the regime and paid for it when he was detained for several weeks in 1992 for objecting to the way oil revenues were being spent, his colleagues recall. As a result he was downgraded from the position of director general to expert in the planning department.
During a major reshuffle at the oil ministry in late 2001, he was appointed by former Oil Minister Amer Rashid as acting director general for planning while waiting to be confirmed as director general by the presidency of Saddam Hussein. The confirmation never came.
As he announced his acceptance of the position, al-Ghadban pointed out that the Iraqi oil ministry “has a long heritage of efficiency, responsibility and talented people.” He added: “The director generals and I will do our best to serve our people.”
Vogler did not say who is on the appointment committee that nominated al-Ghadban, but it is understood that it includes some Iraqis as advisors, including possibly Muhammad-Ali Zaini, who has been tapped for a role on the oil advisory board and who made his first visit to the ministry Sunday with Vogler.
Vogler’s first meeting at the ministry Apr. 29 was with former deputy oil minister Mazen Jumaa, who has a long career in the higher education field including as dean of the university of technology, and was only appointed deputy oil minister in February.
The frustrations of the technocrats seem to have filtered up to the US officials in the headquarters they set up at one of Saddam’s palaces in Baghdad, ringed with barbed wire and tanks.
Other appointments soon followed, including the return of Jumaa to the higher education sector and of another deputy oil minister, Hussein Hadithi, to head the gas filling plant in Baghdad.
Most important is the confirmation of deputy directors Ali Hassan at Somo, Adel Qazaz at North Oil Co. (NOC), Jabbar Hussein Luaibi at South Oil Co. (SOC), and Thaer Ibrahim at South Refinery Co., as acting director generals.
The deputy directors have taken the initiative to lead their employees back to work and restart operations where possible after the former director generals, who are political appointees of Saddam, disappeared in the early days of the war.
During the meeting with the 22 directors, Cross and Vogler conveyed to them that the advisory board will offer professional advice and guidance, though there is still no word as to who the members will be, whether it will have permanent office in the ministry, or when it will hold its first meeting. “Carroll should be in the country in a week but I’m not sure about the rest of the board,” Vogler said. As to the functioning of the board, Cross told reporters: “It is still too early to say.”
Although al-Ghadban has become the highest authority at the oil ministry, with all director generals — including Somo’s — reporting to him, the issue of exports is considered a matter of policy that has to await the appointment of an oil minister.
Conscious that the issue will be revisited by the United Nations when the current resolution extending the oil-for-food program expires on Jun. 3, US representatives in Baghdad have been pressing political parties who came back from exile to reach an agreement on the mechanism of choosing an Interim Iraqi Authority (IIA) before the end of May. Once the IIA is in place, it will appoint ministers and decide on policy issues including the marketing of Iraqi oil and the spending of oil revenues.
Five political factions have been holding regular meetings to discuss the mechanism to choose the IIA. They are: the Iraqi National Congress, headed by Ahmad Chalabi; the Iraqi National Accord of Iyad Alawi; the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), represented by Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, who is the brother of the Tehran-based head of SCIRI Mohammad Baqer al-Hakim; and the two Kurdish parties, Jalal Talabani’s Popular Union of Kurdistan and Massoud Barzani’s Kurdistan Democratic Party.
Adnan Pachachi, a former foreign minister of Iraq who has been living in exile since the late 1960s, is expected to return to Baghdad this week, and to take his place as the sixth member of the executive committee of the Iraqi parties in exile.
By Ruba Husari, Baghdad
(Published in International Oil Daily May 6, 2003)