US: Is it all about oil? Yes and no, the evidence suggests. Conor O'Clery, in New York, weighs the arguments
The Bush administration has consistently denied that its real reasons for taking on President Saddam Hussein are based on a desire to get control of Iraq's oil fields, which contain the second largest oil reserves in the world.
America's critics are unconvinced.
It is all about oil, they say, and about America's plans to seize more control of world output and undermine the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), dominated by Saudi Arabia, which has the world's largest oil reserves and produces some eight million barrels a day.
Iraq would undoubtedly offer the American oil industry enormous opportunities should a US-led invasion succeed in the coming weeks.
The first to benefit would be US companies contracted to upgrade and keep operating Iraq's oil industry infrastructure, which has deteriorated since the Gulf war.
Pipelines and pumping stations are rusting and lacking spare parts. Iraq production has fallen to 2.8 million barrels a day. Experts say that with modernisation it could produce six million barrels a day within five years.
The list of firms likely to bid for such milti-million dollar contracts is headed by Halliburton, where Vice President Dick Cheney was chief executive.
A recent Deutsche Bank report predicted that Halliburton and another large oil company, Schlumberger, could get huge contracts to upgrade wells and pipes around production facilities.
The Wall Street Journal reported last week that US oil company executives are conferring with officials from the White House, the Department of Defence and the State Department on Iraq's post-war oil industry.
It said Mr Cheney's staff held a meeting in October with oil industry executives from Halliburton, Exxon Mobil, ChevronTexaco and ConocoPhillips, though the White House and the companies deny that the encounter took place.
The State Department has also reportedly held meetings this month with two major oil companies.
The main post-war priority for the Bush administration is funding a new Iraqi government and reconstructing the country's infrastructure, and some advisers are arguing that oil revenues must provide the necessary financing so that the US or other members of the international community do not have to shoulder the burden.
A second priority is long-term national interest. Some 70 per cent of all the world's oil reserves are in the Middle East. Currently, US oil imports account for just over half of total US domestic demand. By 2025, oil imports will account for 70 per cent of domestic demand, according to the US Department of Energy.
The US Secretary of State, Mr Colin Powell, has promised that a US military occupation would use Iraq's oilfields for the benefit of the Iraqi people.
However, when he was asked by a reporter this week whether foreign companies like Chevron-Texaco, or the government-owned Iraqi National Oil Company, would control the oil fields in the aftermath of a successful invasion, Mr Powell replied: "We don't have an answer to that question yet."
He said the US was still studying different models.
But Iraqi oil "will be held in trust for the Iraqi people, to benefit the Iraqi people. That is a legal obligation that the occupying power will have."
In Washington there have been reports that conservatives in the administration favour by-passing President Saddam Hussein's Iraqi National Oil Company, which currently controls Iraqi oil output, and taking control of the oilfields, perhaps even opting for privatisation.
Prominent among them is Mr Elliott Abrams, senior director for Near East and North African Affairs on the National Security Council. His approach is said to be supported by Mr Cheney and the Secretary of Defence, Mr Donald Rumsfeld.
Mr Abrams, along with Mr Cheney, Mr Rumsfeld and Mr Paul Wolfowitz, now Mr Rumsfeld's deputy, was associated with a lobby group in the late 1990s which called for the removal of President Saddam Hussein and the use of force if necessary to protect America's vital interests in the Gulf region.
"Everybody speculates about what my views are; what Eliot's views are," Mr Powell said, when asked to comment on the Abrams formula.
"Let me answer the question this way, and this is the best answer you're going to get. It will be held and it will be used in accordance with international law that lays out specific responsibilities of an occupying power."
Mr Powell hinted at furious arguments going on among Bush advisers when he said that several models were being discussed, but no decision had yet been made.
One that he apparently favours would be a continuation of the oil-for-food programme as a way of keeping control, through the UN, of the rate of output so as not to destabilise world oil production.
The main priority of Pentagon planners at present is to secure the oil fields before President Saddam Hussein's forces have a chance to set them ablaze.
The Iraqi President embarked on a scorched-earth programme when withdrawing from Kuwait at the end of the 1991-92 Gulf war. In the wake of the destruction of the Kuwaiti oilfields, US firms like Bechtel got big reconstruction deals and they will be called in again if Iraq burns.
Interestingly, after the Gulf war, Kuwaiti oil production remained under emirate control and foreign investors were not invited in. A new Iraqi administration could take the same attitude.
The key to the future of Iraqi oil is the end of UN sanctions. This would open up the oil sector, and give other countries a big stake.
The Iraqi government has signed oil-production agreements and memorandums worth $38 billion in recent years with Chinese, Italian, Spanish and Russian oil companies, though none can be enacted because of UN sanctions.
Any new Iraqi government or post-war US administration in Baghdad would come under furious international pressure to honour these understandings, but their international validity would be doubtful.
These deals are important to President Saddam Hussein in seeking ties outside Iraq.
Russian companies had secured from the Iraqi President the right to develop 25 billion barrels of oil but an agreement with a Russian consortium led by Lukoil was cancelled last year after Iraq learned Lukoil was looking for guarantees from Washington to keep the reserves after regime change.
A Russian government delegation, led by Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Saltanov, this month travelled to Baghdad to re-establish rights for some Russian companies, and Baghdad was only too glad to initial several new deals.
Much is at stake.
The results of freely opening the spigot of Iraqi oil could be devastating for oil-producing countries like Russia, Saudi Arabia and Venezuela.
If the price of crude oil fell below $18 a barrel from its present level of just over $30 a barrel, it would, for example, severely impact the Russian economy.
"If we go to war, it's not about oil," said Mr Larry Goldstein, president of the Petroleum Industry Research Foundation in New York, recently.
"But the day the war ends, it has everything to do with oil."