Iraq's oil and gas resources will bring about its stability

Although the war in Iraq is in its fifth year, the country will stabilize.

And it will be Iraq's wealth of natural resources, particularly oil and natural gas, that will be the stabilizing factor, predicted Frank Carrico, the Department of Commerce cultural attaché to the U.S. Embassy in Iraq. The country, he said, has a wealth of natural resources but needs a lot of help taking advantage of what it has.

"I think, with the amount of inherent wealth in that country, it will stabilize and with the help it's receiving, it will stabilize sooner rather than later," said Carrico, who traveled to West Texas to visit relatives and meet with local businesses about opportunities in Iraq.

A number of West Texas companies, he pointed out, have experience doing business in the Middle East.

He was accompanied by Steve Recobs, director of the West Texas Export Assistance Center operated by the U.S. Department of Commerce.

"Our standby is oil and gas," said Recobs, who arranged meetings for Carrico with three Midland companies and three Odessa companies Monday. "We still produce state-of-the-art oil and gas equipment and it will be oil that brings that country out of its current situation. Iraq needs a lot, mainly a strong infrastructure."

Carrico noted the Iraqi government has a lot of money but is very cautious about how they spend those funds. The country needs everything from agriculture equipment to the most advanced information technology and telecommunications equipment. But, he said, the sector that needs the most development assistance from the private sector, and the most new jobs, is the oil and gas industry.

"The number one game in Iraq, when it comes to contracts, is employing Iraqis," he said. "When you talk new business development, the underlying goal is how many Iraqis you can employ."

Caution is the watchword currently while living in Baghdad, he added.

"Baghdad is very unstable," he said. "There's a lot of security. You have to be very, very cautious."

Mark Nicholas, president of Nicholas Consulting Group, which hosted Carrico Monday morning, observed that the desire to provide for one's family is universal, as prevalent in Iraq as it is in the United States. His engineering firm already has done business in Iraq, providing parts for a power plant that found their way to Iraq via Kuwait. Nicholas told Carrico that he found his way to that contract by attending a "Building Iraq" conference.

Carrico responded that he and others in the U.S. government are pushing Iraqi officials to attend such conferences outside the country because it is so difficult for Americans to travel to Iraq. He added that commerce officials are taking Iraqi officials to shows like Houston's Offshore Technology Conference so they can network with U.S. businesses.

Iraq's various ministries, he continued, "by and large are open and willing to listen. Some were educated in the west and are willing to listen to your proposals. The general dynamics of the country are that it's a very centralized government historically and government officials are trying to push decision-making out into the provinces, because the provincial leaders know best what's needed. That goes hand-in-hand with the hydrocarbon law that should be passed in two to three months covering everything from oil and gas production to transportation to refining. That will let U.S. companies work with provincial leaders."

The ultimate goal, he said, is to build bilateral ties between U.S. businesses and Iraqi businesses, but that could be applied to any country.

Nicholas said international trade can ease the peaks and valleys of domestic business, especially for those companies in the oil and gas industry, which has its own economic cycle. A lot of time, he added, the work his company does involves crossover technology

"For companies that do business overseas, it's not an easy game," he said. "It takes a lot of foresight and hard work but it's real important. Long-term, if we have companies back away from doing business overseas, we isolate ourselves."