What Happens to the Iraqi Oil?: Thoughts on Some Significant, Unexamined International Legal Questions Regarding Occupation of Oil Fields R. Dobie Langenkamp* and Rex J. Zedalis ** Full text available: PDF format *** Abstract Possible US and allied occupation of Iraqi oil fields following any military action against Saddam Hussein would raise a variety of interesting legal issues under the international law of belligerent occupation. With specific regard to Article 55 of the 1907 Hague Regulations on the Laws and Customs of War on Land, an occupant's treatment of state-owned immovables, such as oil reserves, must accord with the rules of usufruct. In the essay that follows, the authors look at how the rules of usufruct affect three particular matters that have not previously received extensive consideration: (1) the latitude of an occupant to employ sophisticated producing technologies that increase the degree to which an oil field may be swept clean; (2) the permissibility of increasing the rate or volume at which oil is produced from a particular field; and, (3) the uses to which an occupant may put either the oil produced or the proceeds from sales of such. The authors suggest that a usufructuary is permitted to exercise a rather broad, though not unlimited, discretion in connection with selecting extraction technologies and rates of production. As for how the oil produced or the proceeds from such may be used, it is suggested that international law forbids any use that can be seen as being for the enrichment of the occupant. * National Energy-Environment Law and Policy Institute, University of Tulsa ** Comparative and International Law Center, University of Tulsa *** The free viewer (Acrobat Reader) for PDF file is available at the Adobe Systems.
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