A deal for Saddam - Jan, 2003

Let’s travel back in time: imagine it is now 3 Jan 2003; the 108th Congress has just convened.

Suppose some eager new member in the House or Senate had proposed the following bill:

Resolved:
To buy Iraq’s entire petroleum output for $80/bbl for the next five (5) years.

In my imagination, that deluded gentleman or lady would have been laughed off the floor.

On 3 Jan 2003, the price of oil was hovering around $30/bbl. In Saddam’s pre-war Iraq, production was running around 2.5Mn bbls/day. Let’s be generous and say Iraq produced 3Mn bbls/day.

That $80/bbl offer might have looked pretty good to Saddam: a 167% mark-up from currently prevailing prices. He just might have considered it. Had he taken the deal, he might have felt a bit more willing to support U.S. interests in Iraq and the region.

What would this five-year contract have cost the U.S. taxpayer?
$80/bbl x 3Mn bbls/day x 365 days/year x 5 years = $438Bn.

What has the war cost to date (less than 5 years since it started)?
The best guess I can find is provided by The National Priorities Project, which estimates cost-to-date of $460Bn. [15 Oct 2007]
(http://www.nationalpriorities.org/Cost-of-War/Cost-of-War-3.html)

That ludicrous, laughable five-year, $80/bbl contract with Saddam doesn’t seem as ludicrous anymore!

… AND: we’d have the oil! We could have simply GIVEN it to Exxon/Mobil and other Big Oil companies – surely this would have had SOME positive effect on price of gasoline at the pump for American consumers! (It probably would have been a good deal for W’s oil-patch buddies to boot!)