The sprawling concrete flatlands of Basra airport were for six years the domain of the British military. Now big business is steadily taking over, with oil barons and prospectors from Europe and the Gulf mustering to assess post-war entrées to Iraq. Around $150 (€105) per night will buy a clean bed in a frugal, air-conditioned hut with three meals a day and conference room facilities. It is the best spot in southern Iraq for deal-making, and, so far, it is the only place in the country outside the American military bases where the trappings of fast food are on offer.

Since March, some of Europe's leading executives have been through here. Chiefs from Amec, Twitter, Foster Wheeler Energy, Halcrow and BP have come and gone, followed by delegations on the hunt for opportunities.

All around the base a black oily silt sits on the baking desert sand – a legacy of burnt gas and impurities belched from nearby oil sites and a ready reckoner of the spoils on offer in the region's most likely investment arena.

After the blazing guns of insurgency were largely subdued in most parts of Iraq mid-2008, oil has been the centre piece of the government's plans for reconstruction and recovery. And, for the first time in 40 years, foreign oil companies are now being actively invited in to cut a share of one of the world's great hydrocarbon preserves.

Industry estimates suggest that six oil fields in Iraq's north and south contain 115 billion barrels of oil. Only Saudi Arabia, with more than twice Iraq's reserves, and Iran with roughly the same as its war-ravaged neighbour, are in the same global league for old-world energy.

And Iraq's fields could well hold tens of billions more barrels than thought. Rigorous scientific assessment has until now been impossible through three decades of despotic rule, three wars, 12 years of sanctions and six years of occupation.

Iraq's leaders now seem to feel that their time – and that of their long-suffering people – has come. They claim Iraq must quickly stake its claim in the planet's energy heartland.

Throughout the government and the ruling class, there is a broad acceptance that the country's now fragile institutions, so long a bulwark of Marxist bureaucracy, have to urgently change the way they operate. Ministers and trade chiefs have been instructing their underlings that private/public sector partnerships are the only way forward.

Suspicious of foreigners throughout the ages – and doubly so now on the eve of allowing an entrée to their country's only meal ticket – such an overhaul is running contrary to the instincts of many Iraqis, especially among the facilitators needed to make sure that the deals done by their leaders are followed through. There is a feeling in Baghdad that Iraq is only just done with the old world and that the new world of the private sector may be too difficult to control.

Finance minister Baqir al-Zubeidi is having none of that. Inside his office in one of Saddam Hussein's palaces, in the heart of what is now Baghdad's International Zone, he says Iraq's hopes hang solely on embracing capitalism and its foreign bearers and getting its oil out of the ground as efficiently as possible. "This is the beginning for Iraq" he says. "It gives us a chance. Iraq needs $300bn–$400bn [€210bn–€280bn] to rebuild, especially for infrastructure. The Iraqi people need more services for all areas of their lives, especially electricity, sewerage and roads and we cannot do this by ourselves."

Outlining the road ahead for a country so starved of services that an estimated 40% of the population has no access to running water and more than 90% of homes have no more than 12 hours of electricity a day, Al-Zubeidi says the experience with oil production should create efficiencies elsewhere. "When I came to this ministry in 2006, we were 97% oil-revenue dependent," he says. "We are now down to 86.5%. There have been improvements in tax collections for cars and customs as well as revenues from land and minerals like phosphate. But we have a long way to go."

Iraqi government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh agrees that oil is the centrepiece of Iraq's 10-year economic plan: "We want to make sure that we do not waste the oil reserves of Iraq. But at the same time there is a need to develop the reserves in the best interests of Iraqis."

For now, it is full steam ahead, with one eye to the south of the country and another to the oil fields of Iraqi Kurdistan in the north, which are also about to come on line. The Kurdish Administration has kept a tight grip on its slice of the country since Baghdad fell in 2003. It has maintained all export lines to Turkey that Baghdad considers illegal. The benefits appear tangible. The clean and largely secure streets of the provincial Kurdish capital, Erbil, are lined with outlet stores and sparkling shopping malls offering top shelf European white goods and electronics, such as Bosch, Kenwood and Bose. There are currently no Starbucks or McDonald's here, but neither would look out of place.

In Baghdad, prominent displays of Western consumerism are few and far between. In the relatively wealthy suburb of Karrada, a sports outlet recently opened, selling lines of Nike and Adidas clothes. Its debut made the papers. And so did the fact that it hasn't been attacked in the three months since.

Just up the road from the finance minister's office is a construction site where a five-star hotel – the first to be approved in nearly two decades – is taking shape. Officials hope that this will soon be a hub for foreign investors tempted to town by the success of the oil bidding process and relatively stable security. Although Iraq remains potentially lethal, and militants have repeatedly shown their ability to ramp up devastating violence on cue, the country believes that banking on two key tenets – security and oil – will eventually foster a broad investment environment.

"There are positive steps being taken," says Al-Zubeidi, "but the atmosphere is not easy now. That said, we have to move forward. There is no going back. Hard decisions have to be taken."