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Oil law? We don't need no stinkin' oil law.

So says the Iraqi Oil Ministry, which will soon circumvent the stalemate over how Iraqi oil revenues should be split up by announcing a number of no-bid contracts to foreign oil companies:

Four Western oil companies are in the final stages of negotiations this month on contracts that will return them to Iraq, 36 years after losing their oil concession to nationalization as Saddam Hussein rose to power.

Exxon Mobil, Shell, Total and BP — the original partners in the Iraq Petroleum Company — along with Chevron and a number of smaller oil companies, are in talks with Iraq's Oil Ministry for no-bid contracts to service Iraq's largest fields.

Mission accomplished? You bet. Now everyone's happy — well, except for the various Iraqi factions who wanted a say in how oil profits should be distributed among them.

Oh, and I guess the 46 oil companies who had "memorandums of understanding" with the Iraqi Oil Ministry, including "the leading oil companies of China, India and Russia," and who ended up with exactly zero contracts — I guess they're not too happy, either.

And the people of Iraq, whom we have pounded and embargoed and humiliated for going on 20 years — they're going to end up on the short end of the stick, too, once this giant foothold that the foreign oil companies have managed to gain results in the complete de-nationalizaion of the Iraqis' sole, lucrative national resource.