Add all those hundreds of billions of dollars to your "cheap oil" bill.

(ALTERNET) - Even as Iraq verges on splintering into a sectarian civil war, four big oil companies are on the verge of locking up its massive, profitable reserves, known to everyone in the petroleum industry as "the prize."

Iraq is sitting on a mother lode of some of the lightest, sweetest, most profitable crude oil on earth, and the rules that will determine who will control it and on what terms are about to be set.

he Iraqi government faces a December deadline, imposed by the world's wealthiest countries, to complete its final oil law....