Iraq's new oil minister, Thamir Ghadhban, outlined a programme on Wednesday to assume control of his country's oil wealth, vowing to re-establish Iraq's national oil company "immediately" after the country regains sovereignty on July 1.
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"We want to go back to the old healthy management of the 1970s when the Iraqi National Oil Company [INOC] used to be financed from its own production, and the remainder of the oil revenues went to the government," he said in his first interview since his appointment on June 1.

In a further move to re-establish Iraq's control over the world's second largest oil reserves, Mr Ghadhban said that all coalition advisers would be dismissed.

"When sovereignty is regained it means that there will be no more US advisers, not only in the ministry of oil, but in every ministry in Iraq," said Mr Ghadhban, a Shia hailing from Hilla province, the same as Iraq's new prime minister, Ayad Allawi.

In spite of his plans to re-establish INOC, he said Iraq would take time to consider the merits of privatisation, respecting the Coalition's annex to the Transitional Administrative Law that calls for the new government to do "nothing affecting Iraq's destiny" before elections scheduled to take place within seven months.

But he added: "Even if we don't have the authority we will do a lot of preparatory work [such as] preparing tender documents.