While many global oil executives preach optimism to investors and the general public, Issam A.R. Al-Chalabi, the former Iraqi oil minister, has a different message.

"Iraq offers nothing but misery and mystery," he said at the recent Cambridge Energy Research Associates conference in Houston. "It is estimated to contain 115 billion barrels of reserves, maybe more. But the Western Desert has never been explored, not even one horizontal well has been drilled, and 3-D seismic has never been shot."

The political nature of oil has kept Iraq from realizing its full potential as an oil-producing country, he said, and he doesn't expect the oil industry's situation in Iraq to change any time soon.

"Oil is politics, so where do we stand today? Not a single day passes without 100 to 200 Iraqis getting killed and millions are displaced. More than 270 oil workers were killed in Iraq in 2006, and many more were kidnapped with ransoms paid, never to be heard from again."

Though efforts have been made by the current Iraqi oil minister and by the national oil company, they have not been able to make any progress. Seismic crews can't work in the field because they would be attacked, and as for development, three fields were scheduled to be upgraded and onstream by 2006, yet nothing has been constructed, Al-Chalabi said.

"Our current reservoirs have been mismanaged and ignored since the 1990s," he said. Individual regions of Iraq cannot agree upon how the profits from the country's vast oil reserves should be distributed, leaving the country without a real plan for developing its resources.

"I doubt we'll have a conclusion very soon," he said. "Don't expect any real conclusion on this, and for those of you who have put your Iraq file on the shelf, keep it there."

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