The Oman oil lease
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The Oman oil lease is one of the cases John Kiriakou uses to describe private intelligence work after his government career.

A company had leased, not bought, an oil field in Oman for ninety-nine years. The field sat right on the border with Yemen, and, as Kiriakou tells it, none of them had any idea at the time that al-Qaeda controlled that border: nobody was going to get within fifty miles of the oil.

The question they put to him was narrow and practical. If they approached the Omanis and offered to pay for the Omani military to force al-Qaeda out, would the Omanis do it, or should the company simply walk away from the lease?

The trip

Kiriakou went to Oman and saw the Minister of Oil, the Deputy Minister of Oil and the deputy director of the intelligence service. He is careful about the nature of those relationships, they had met, they were not buddies, but the introductions through the Omani embassy in Washington were enough to get the appointments.

His report back was two sentences long in substance: "they're going to gouge you, but they'll push al-Qaeda out of your oil field." The company drilled.

Kiriakou offers the case, alongside the Romanian silver mine and the Cypriot billionaire's investigation, as the answer to what private intelligence actually is: doing exactly what you did at the CIA, without classified information.

See also

- Oman
- Private Intelligence
- The Romanian silver mine
- Cypriot Billionaire Investigation
- Yemen
