Global Policy Forum

By Neela Banerjee

After spending Monday listening to the captains of the Iraqi oil industry talk about the future, Alain Lechevalier was trying to cheer himself up with a sherry and memories of Iraq's past in the bar of the Hotel Intercontinental. A fond connoisseur of all things Iraqi for more than 30 years, Mr. Lechevalier, vice president for Mideast exploration at the French oil giant Total, had been sitting for hours in a dim, cavernous hall with 300 other executives from the world's largest oil companies, bathing in predictions and insights about the country's rich but dilapidated oil industry.

The Iraqis and the experts at the conference, including top people from the oil ministry itself, often contradicted one another, and agreed only on the grimmest points: It will be several years before any foreign oil company can consider investing in Iraq, and by the way, the security situation on the ground is poor.

And yet. And yet. "Iraq is still the best place to go in the world today," said Alan M. Taylor, bounding into the bar with his business partner, Norman Davidson Kelly. They are former executives of the Australian oil and mining company BHP who have founded a small company called Tigris Petroleum.

The two have spent less time in Iraq than Mr. Lechevalier, perhaps, but unlike him they have been back to the country since the war. And between beers, the occasional Marlboro and an unresolved dispute about whether Mr. Davidson Kelly had properly compensated Mr. Lechevalier for a certain case of wine, the two Australians reminded their French friend and his colleague, Gonzagues Defforges, that what once was in Iraq could be again.

"The Iraqis believe in the win-win approach," Mr. Davidson Kelly said. "The people we deal with in Iraq - and I haven't been able to do business with them personally since 1995 - but there was no question they knew what they wanted. Australia had a long history of doing business with them, and sometimes it was done over the phone or on a handshake, and that was all it took. "But you had to perform. You couldn't cheat them. If you deal with them fairly, they will deal with you fairly."

Perking up as if remembering an old friend, Mr. Lechevalier chimed in. "Furthermore, they are very pleasant to deal with," Mr. Lechevalier said. "They are sophisticated. They speak English." Mr. Defforges added, "And they are not arrogant." He, too, had made it back into Iraq after the war, for 10 days in July. "I never, never noticed among Iraqis that they would say, 'Well, you have the money, but give it to us, and we'll manage it' "- unlike another oil power he did not want to name.

Energy companies willing to pursue the biggest oil and gas reserves in the world are accustomed to the demands for bribes, the broken promises, the din of civil wars in the countries where those reserves lie. Iraq's energy riches, now exceeded only by those of Saudi Arabia and Canada, are enough to entice executives from all directions - from Singapore, from Russia, from the United States - to attend a "road show" presentation here this week, organized for the Iraqis by CWC Associates of London. The Iraqis appreciate the attention, and energy companies worry that if they chose not to turn up, their absence would be noticed.

But beyond the raw magnitude of the oil riches at stake in Iraq is a subtler promise, at least for those who know the country, that Iraq just might turn into a gentler place to work than so many other petroleum-rich countries.

Right now, of course, it is not. Many companies refuse to send employees into Iraq for fear of attacks; those that have sent scouts venturing into the country often refuse to talk about it. During coffee breaks at the Geneva meeting, the attendees who had been in country could be found proffering advice to those who were considering going, with the yet-to-gos looking decidedly the less blithe.

"We're hated more than the tobacco companies," said one oil executive, who spoke on condition that he not be identified. "So, if you had two or three people die in Iraq for the sake of some project, shareholders and everyone else would be all over you."

Despite all the political uncertainties about future elections, a new constitution and a new oil law, what executives like the four men at the Intercontinental's bar had seen so far of the new Iraq made the risks they have taken so far, and the drudgery of sitting through conferences, seem worthwhile.

"In Iraq, they will tell you, 'We have been out of the game for 15 years. We don't know certain things,' '' Mr. Defforges said. "It is so nice to deal with people like that, who say, 'We need your help to improve our knowledge.' " "And what other country could keep up production like that over 13 years of sanctions?" Mr. Taylor asked. "No other country."

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