Iraq oil pipeline protection earns U.S. engineer honors

Published
by
Iraq Oil Report
on March 9, 2009
in Security & Conflict
. 0 Comments

Plus:
* Shahristani says low oil price warrants cut
* Exxon Mobil leaning on Iraq investment
* Women in Iraq
* Iran-Iraq border dispute remains
* Iraq’s Agent Orange

New physical barriers keeping would-be saboteurs from attacking Iraq’s northern pipeline have led to increased oil exports. It’s a major reason Elizabeth Burg, a U.S. Army civilian who volunteered for duty in Iraq, was recently named one of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ top five proteges.

Burg’s duties include inspections of Iraqi contract workers beefing up the Pipeline Exclusion Zone, a project begun in 2007 to restrict access to vital oil arteries and build obstacles for attacks, Ben Lando reports for United Press International.

Burg at the fence of the Pipeline Exclusion Zone 35 miles northwest of Baghdad.

Burg at the fence of the Pipeline Exclusion Zone, 35 miles northwest of Baghdad.

Attackers wanting to penetrate the PEZ must, in rough terms, traverse a ditch, berms, razor wire and then a fence, all while keeping cover from new Oil Police and other Iraqi security forces based within the protective zone.

“One of the main features is the road crossings, which restrict access across the area,” Burg wrote in an e-mail interview with UPI. “The area is very flat and wide open (your typical desert), but the Tigris River was an obstacle in our particular area; it was very marshy, and getting the fence installed there was a challenge.

“One of the constructability issues we had to deal with is the high water table in the area,” she added. “It ended up working to our benefit, because when the ditches on the outside of the fence fill with water, it creates sort of a ‘water hazard,’ which makes crossing in to the exclusion zone even more difficult. The terrain close to the Tigris is very rough, which was also a challenge during construction.”

Iraq’s oil minister says crude oil prices are not “profitable and fair” for oil producing countries and should be increased. The Associated Press reports Hussain al-Shahristani says members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries are working to control prices to “inch them up.”

Exxon Mobil Corp is in constant dialogue with Baghdad to create the investment climate that would allow it to become a significant player in Iraq’s energy sector, Exxon’s chief executive said on Monday. “I hope Iraq creates the conditions that will allow a company like Exxon Mobil to be a participant in a significant way,” said Chief Executive Rex Tillerson, Luke Pachymuthu reports for Reuters.

Iraqi Women: Iraq Oil Report would like to mark International Women’s Day by highlighting new stories and reports on the status of women’s rights in Iraq. Unfortunately, we’re compelled to revisit older stories, which mark the special terror women in Iraq have been forced and continue to endure since 2003 — and their triumph against such odds:

While violence decreases across Iraq, women in the war-ravaged country face worsening hardships as warfare has thrust them into the role of family breadwinners, an aid group’s survey said, CNN reports.

Rather than prioritizing one gender over another, it is important to recognize the specific vulnerabilities of each. War affects men, women, children or the elderly, in different ways, the Red Cross says in its new report Women in War, which relied on interviews with Iraqi women.

The Special Representative of the United Nations Secretary General for Iraq, Staffan de Mistura, expressed his concern that the many years of wars and conflict have stalled and set back progress towards achieving equality for Iraqi women. He urged all relevant authorities to marshal resources to ensure that women’s rightful access to education and healthcare, work and effective political participation.

She goes by Hinda, but that’s not her real name. That’s what she’s called by the many Iraqi sex traffickers and pimps who contact her several times a week from across the country. They think she is one of them, a peddler of sexual slaves. Little do they know that the stocky auburn-haired woman is an undercover human-rights activist who has been quietly mapping out their murky underworld since 2006, Rania Abouzeid reports for TIME.

For Kurdish Girls, a Painful Ancient Ritual: the widespread practice of female circumcision in Iraq’s north highlights the plight of women in a region often seen as more socially progressive, Amit R. Paley reported for The Washington Post in December.

Ethnic tensions in Kirkuk turn U.S. military into mediator, Trenton Daniel reports for McClatchy Newspapers:

When U.S. Col. Ryan Gonsalves strapped on his helmet and body armor and climbed into his mine-resistant vehicle on a recent Saturday afternoon, he wasn’t heading to battle.

The commander was rushing off to mediate the latest dispute between the Kurds, who dominate the local government, and the Shiite Muslim Arab-led Iraqi army, which is trying to assert its authority in this contested area in northern Iraq. …

As American forces shift their focus from combat operations to peacekeeping efforts because of recent security gains, Gonsalves and his soldiers from the U.S. Army’s 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 1st Cavalry Division, are working against the clock to mediate a long-standing dispute over oil and land and federalism and nationalism in the battleground of Kirkuk. The sense of urgency: Washington plans to pull out combat troops in August 2010. If left unresolved, the Kirkuk issue could explode.

Kurdish parties have dispatched forces well south of the Green Line, a United Nations-created boundary that’s marked the semiautonomous region of Kurdistan since 1991. Arabs say that the Kurds are seizing land that rightfully belongs to them, while Kurds say the land was theirs until former dictator Saddam Hussein purged them from it. In this bitter contest, both sides have employed tactics that range from intimidation and detention to murder.

The central government and Kurdish troops nearly came to blows last year in Khanaqeen, in neighboring Diyala province, when Iraqi forces tried to move into the area. Stepping in, the Americans averted imminent clashes.

It’s easy to see why the sectarian divisions could prove even more explosive: The region houses what’s thought to be the sixth largest oil reserve in the world.

Iraq and Iran are seriously at odds on defining their land and sea borders, Baghdad’s foreign minister said in comments on Monday that showed the neighbors, despite improved ties, have not resolved old tensions. “We have very big problems with the Iranian side with setting and drawing the land, sea and coastal borders,” said the minister, Hoshiyar Zebari, Reuters reports.

Oregon veteran disabled by Iraq’s ‘Agent Orange,’ a heartbreaking tale of alleged U.S. government and corporate (KBR) misconduct in Iraq by Julie Sullivan in The Oregonian:

The soldiers worried about Saddam Hussein loyalists, not the dust.

Dust coated the Oregon Army National Guardsmen’s combat boots and caked their skin as they protected Halliburton KBR contractors restoring oil flow in Iraq in 2003. Dust poofed from the soldiers’ uniforms as they crowded into vans at the end of the day and shared tents at night.

When the dust blew onto Spc. Larry Roberta’s ready-to-eat meal, he rinsed the chicken patty with his canteen water and ate it. …

The same Oregon Guard soldiers who went into Iraq without adequate body armor or up-armored Humvees face another dubious first: exposure to hexavalent chromium, which greatly increases their risk of cancer and other diseases. …

Officials say they didn’t learn of the problem themselves until November, when the Army, spurred by lawsuits in Indiana and Texas and a subsequent Senate investigation, alerted the Oregon Guard. The suits claim KBR ignored both a United Nations report and its own employees’ warnings about the danger. …

The 1-162 arrived at its base of operations in Kuwait on April 18, 2003, and within weeks, the soldiers from Gresham and McMinnville were assigned to escort and protect KBR contractors on a mission called “Restore Iraqi Oil.”…

Houston-based Kellogg, Brown & Root Services, then a subsidiary of Halliburton, won the contract to get the oil flowing in Iraq. Repairing the water treatment plant, which maintained pressure in nearby oil wells, was a top priority. …

Just weeks after the Indiana Guard replaced the Oregonians, a new KBR safety officer arrived at the water treatment plant at Qarmat Ali. Ed Blacke was shocked by the widespread orange and yellow dust piled feet deep in places. The powder, he learned, was a corrosion fighter that contained hexavalent chromium. Soon he had sinus, throat and breathing problems, and found that 60 percent of the soldiers and staff at Qarmat Ali had identical symptoms. KBR managers told him it was “a nonissue.” …

In March 2008, nine KBR employees, including whistle-blower Blacke, sued KBR for damages. Under federal law, the case went to arbitration last week. In December, 16 Indiana Guardsmen filed their own lawsuit, contending KBR “disregarded and downplayed the extreme danger.” The Indiana commander is dying of a rare lung cancer that the VA has ruled is related to being at the water treatment plant. …

–

New Iraq oil strategy attempts to walk political fine line

Published
by
Iraq Oil Report
on March 5, 2009
in Headline and Politics
. 0 Comments

Plus:
*New budget approved after further cuts
*New Report: More than Shiites and Sunnis
*Iraq Teachers Union targeted by government
*Video-Alive in Baghdad: US Withdrawing as Media Retreat from Iraq

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has lent his support to a new two-pronged oil-development strategy in an attempt to appease those who have challenged the current strategy as relying too much on the hope of future investment from international oil companies by launching an immediate domestic work program, IHS Global Insight Middle East analyst Samuel Ciszuk writes in a column for United Press International.

Iraq’s parliament defied government objections and voted on Thursday to cut the oil-dependent country’s 2009 budget by $4.2 billion, or nearly 7 percent, due to slumping oil prices, Ahmed Rasheed reports for Reuters.

Falling oil prices will force Iraq to cut back on military spending, leaving questions about whether it can handle tasks such as protecting oil platforms in the Gulf once the American pullout is complete, a top U.S. commander said, Chelsea J. Carter reports for The Associated Press.

An Iraqi oil official says February oil exports slipped to about 1.8 million barrels a day from almost 1.9 million in the previous month, The Associated Press reports.

More than Shiites and Sunnis: How a Post-Sectarian Strategy Can Change the Logic and Facilitate Sustainable Political Reform in Iraq, a new policy report presents the consensus view of a group of distinguished Iraqi academics and professionals brought together with the support of the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs. It is based on the proceedings of several meetings held at various locations in Europe and the Middle East during 2008, including a three-day workshop in Jordan in October. Iraqis from all parts of the country were present, Islamists as well as secularists, from a wide range of professional backgrounds – including political science, the oil sector, and the military. The group included people living inside Iraq as well as exiles, and brought together people who are part of today’s political process as well as individuals who have remained outside it. This document concentrates on the specific policy proposals that emerged during the process. It constitutes a rare example of a plan of action for Iraq and the international community that can appeal to all Iraqis, regardless of ethnic or sectarian background.

The Iraqi Teachers Union says the government is demanding the keys and contents of the national office and threatening prison for noncompliance. Strongerunions.org reports the union, which took to the streets demanding increased pay last year — says the government is forcing them into state-controlled leadership elections and is preventing the current leadership to run in the contest. The labor code is one of the few remaining laws from the Saddam Hussein era, despite language in the 2005 Constitution requiring a new labor law.

The status of the oil-rich province of Kirkuk lies at the centerof a growing tug of war between Arabs and Kurds, which many fear may push the two sides towards conflict. Muhammed Abdullah of Niqash met Muhammad Khalil al-Jibouri, head of Kirkuk’s Arab List, to inquire about the work of the “Article 23 Commission”, developments in Arab-Kurdish relations and the future of the province.

Alive in Baghdad: US Withdrawing as Media Retreat from Iraq

If you were to judge only from the press coverage in Europe or the United States, you might gather that the conflict in Iraq is all but over and done with. Newspapers, broadcasters, and even wealthy satellite news agencies are all cutting back on their foreign reporters, and the Iraqi bureaus full of producers, editors, and reporters are first on the chopping block. Alive in Baghdad isn’t leaving. And this week, as a sign of how far we’ve come, and how far left we have yet to go, we bring you this classic episode from the archives on the sectarian walls in Baghdad’s Adhamiya neighborhood.


–

Obama outlines U.S. withdrawal from Iraq, war

Published
by
Iraq Oil Report
on February 27, 2009
in Politics
. 0 Comments

President Barack Obama said Iraqis will no longer see U.S. troops in their streets “by the end of 2011,” which he said was in line with the Status Of Forces Agreement signed between Iraq and the United States.

The troop drawdown has already been started and “by August 31, 2010, our combat mission in Iraq will end,” Obama told his mostly Marine audience at Camp Lejeune in North Carolina. “We will retain a transitional force to carry out three distinct functions: training, equipping, and advising Iraqi Security Forces as long as they remain non-sectarian; conducting targeted counter-terrorism missions; and protecting our ongoing civilian and military efforts within Iraq. Initially, this force will likely be made up of 35-50,000 U.S. troops.”

“As we carry out this drawdown,” Obama said, “my highest priority will be the safety and security of our troops and civilians in Iraq.”

More key Obama speech quotes:

But let there be no doubt: Iraq is not yet secure, and there will be difficult days ahead. Violence will continue to be a part of life in Iraq. Too many fundamental political questions about Iraq’s future remain unresolved. Too many Iraqis are still displaced or destitute. Declining oil revenues will put an added strain on a government that has had difficulty delivering basic services. Not all of Iraq’s neighbors are contributing to its security. Some are working at times to undermine it. And even as Iraq’s government is on a surer footing, it is not yet a full partner – politically and economically – in the region, or with the international community.

The long-term solution in Iraq must be political – not military. Because the most important decisions that have to be made about Iraq’s future must now be made by Iraqis.

The situation in Iraq has improved. Violence has been reduced substantially from the horrific sectarian killing of 2006 and 2007.

The capacity of Iraq’s Security Forces has improved, and Iraq’s leaders have taken steps toward political accommodation.

And going forward, the United States will pursue principled and sustained engagement with all of the nations in the region, and that will include Iran and Syria.

Obama said recent local elections that were largely – but not completely – free from violence, corruption and dispute “sent powerful message to the world.”

Obama added his goal is “an Iraq that is sovereign, stable, and self-reliant. To achieve that goal, we will work to promote an Iraqi government that is just, representative, and accountable, and that provides neither support nor safe-haven to terrorists. We will help Iraq build new ties of trade and commerce with the world. And we will forge a partnership with the people and government of Iraq that contributes to the peace and security of the region.”

Millions of Iraqis were forced from their homes – even their country – due to the 2003 invasion and its aftermath. Obama pledged to help those who “are a living consequence of this war and a challenge to stability in the region, and they must become a part of Iraq’s reconciliation and recovery.”

He called it “a strategic interest,” as well as “a moral responsibility” to and said there will soon be more activity from the administration for displaced Iraqis and the countries who have provided havens.

Before promising increased benefits to American troops, Obama said he had a message to Iraqis:

You are a great nation, rooted in the cradle of civilization. You are joined together by enduring accomplishments, and a history that connects you as surely as the two rivers carved into your land. In years past, you have persevered through tyranny and terror; through personal insecurity and sectarian violence. And instead of giving in to the forces of disunion, you stepped back from a descent into civil war, and showed a proud resilience that deserves respect. …

So to the Iraqi people, let me be clear about America’s intentions. The United States pursues no claim on your territory or your resources. We respect your sovereignty and the tremendous sacrifices you have made for your country. We seek a full transition to Iraqi responsibility for the security of your country. And going forward, we can build a lasting relationship founded upon mutual interests and mutual respect as Iraq takes its rightful place in the community of nations.

REACTION UPDATE:

First, stateside. The anti-war and more progressive Americans say Obama’s plan weak. Iraq Veterans Against the War called for a “complete withdrawal from Iraq,” and referred to Obama’s timeline as “a plan for almost three more years of an unjustified military occupation that continues to claim the lives and livelihoods of our troops and innocent Iraqis.” IVAW is made up of current and former U.S. military members who served in Iraq and the Global War on Terror.

Rep. Lynn Woolsey, D-Calif., said “I am deeply troubled by the suggestion that a force of 50,000 troops could remain in Iraq beyond this timeframe. Call such a troop level what you will, but such a large number can only be viewed by the Iraqi public as an enduring occupation force. This is unacceptable.”

In Iraq:

Maliki tells Obama Iraqis ready to receive security responsibilities - Aswat al-Iraq

Many Iraqis fear ‘hasty’ withdrawal - NBC News’ Karim Hilmi

Most Iraqis welcome Obama’s pullout plan - TIME’s Mark Kukis

Iraqis split over Obama pullout plan; U.S. troops say Iraqis ready for Obama timetable - The Associated Press’ Lara Jakes

EXPERT UPDATE:

Obama’s new Iraq strategy: Clarity on troop withdrawals; uncertainty about political reform - Reidar Visser in Historiae.org (Visser is an author and Iraq expert, research fellow at the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs, and a member of the Gulf Research Unit at the University of Oslo)

Very little is coming out so far from the meeting led by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki Friday with Iraqi and foreign oil experts aimed at evaluating and possibly changing Iraq’s oil strategy.

“We are in dire need of your expertise and proposals,” al-Maliki is quoted by Sinan Salahaddin of The Associated Press. “We are in a race against time and every day that passes while the oil industry is idled, we lose an opportunity for development.”

This meeting is both economic and political. Iraq’s oil reserves need billions in investment, new technology and modern training to maintain oil production, let alone increase to a level fit for the world’s third largest oil reserves. Iraq’s political leaders have also not clarified an oil policy that is complicated also by a need to establish post-Saddam Hussein laws for oil and gas development, redistributing revenue, a new role for the Oil Ministry and a new national oil company. There is also the mostly Kurdish demand that Iraq open up its reserves to foreign investors — a privatization of the oil — and those such as the oil workers and other more nationalist proponents of renewing the Iraqi capacity to produce and sell oil.

With local elections over and certified, now comes the task of weighing politics and elections results and forming governorate councils. Here’s Iraq’s Independent High Electoral Commission’s fact sheet on the guidelines for putting together the legislative body in charge of running nearly all of Iraq’s provinces. (The three provinces making up the Kurdistan Region of Iraq are exempt, as is Kirkuk.)

Everyone wants a piece of Kirkuk, the golden prize, Joost Hiltermann writes in The National. (The National’s website was down at the time of publication, so we linked to the piece cross-published at the website of the International Crisis Group, where Hiltermann is Middle East Deputy Program Director.)
Joost Hiltermann in The National

What can Europe do in Iraq? Recommendations for a new U.S.-European collaboration, by Daniel Korski and Richard Gowan for the Heinrich Böll Foundation.

–

Iraq finalizes oil drilling joint venture with Mesopotamia Petroleum

Published
by
Iraq Oil Report
on February 26, 2009
in Economy
. 3 Comments

A deal has been finalized creating a joint venture between the Iraq Drilling Co. and the British Mesopotamia Petroleum Co.

It’s the first such joint venture in post-Saddam Iraq, and will likely be a template for future projects to bring foreign oil companies into the world’s third largest oil reserves.

The Iraq Oil Service Co. will be responsible for drilling at least 60 wells a year, with the country seeing a 120,000 barrels per day increase within the first year, Ahmed Rasheed reports for Reuters, adding Bazargan, Fakka and Halfaya fields will be the first to get new wells drilled.

The IDC will own 51 percent of the JV, with MPC owning 49 percent. MPC was founded in 2005 by Ramco Energy and Midmar Energy.

The deal between IDC and MPC, creating the Iraq Oil Service Co. (IOSCO) was first outlined in detail in December by United Press International’s Ben Lando.

“IOSCO will purchase and operate 12 new drilling rigs in Iraq and secure contracts for drilling programmes in the oil fields controlled by the state owned South Oil Company (SOC), Missan Oil Company (MOC), Oil Exploration Company (OEC) and the North Oil Company (NOC),” according to a statement by Midmar Energy. “The parties to the joint venture intend to invest a total of $400m in the Joint Venture. As part of its commitment, MPC intends to supply IOSCO with the necessary integrated drilling and completion methods and technologies to dramatically boost hydrocarbon production volumes.”

More details also available in a Ramco Energy press statement.

Leadership of the new company are now meeting to determine the work schedule, The Associated Press reports.

Not coincidentally, British Foreign Secretary David Miliband made a surprise trip to Iraq, meeting with the prime minister, foreign minister and two vice presidents, Agence France-Presse reports..

Iraq will extend letters of credit to both Siemens and General Electric as part of their major electricity deals. But due to budget constraints, Reuters reports, the Iraqi government is looking at amending and drawing down the size of the contract.

In few nations around the globe are the consequences of the financial crisis as potentially sobering as they are in Iraq. Both oil revenues and American financial support have plummeted just as the country has the chance to take advantage of its increasing stability to improve basic services and upgrade its ruined infrastructure, Campbell Robertson and James Glanz reports for The New York Times.

The level of security in Baghdad is weighed in a piece by the new TIME reporter Nick McDonell. He starts with a joke from a colleague, asking why he’d go to Iraq now that the situation is so improved. But McDonell finds that security is relative: there may be fewer killed today than a year ago, but citizens have a big need for electricity still, and it is still a dangerous place to be.

Iraq’s southern city of Basra is drowning in dangerous mines and unexploded artillery say its inhabitants. The mines have already killed and injured hundreds of people and residents of the province say they are now facing a “fourth war,” Saleem al-Wazzan reports for Niqash. “There are districts and fields in east Basra which have been abandoned by people and transformed from fertile agricultural dreamlands… into arid landmine deserts,” said Iyad al-Kanaan, head of Iraq’s Demining Organization.

Ali al-Dabbagh, a government spokesman, sat down with Sa’ad Salloum of Niqash to discuss the recent provincial elections, growing Arab-Kurdish tensions and Europe’s re-engagement with Iraq.

Ninawa province lies at the centre of a growing conflict between Arabs and Kurds over a 300 mile strip of disputed territory that some fear may lead to civil war. On the back of the recent provincial elections which handed power to the Arab nationalist Hadba movement, ending Kurdish control established in 2005, there are worries that these tensions may now escalate. Adel Kamal of Niqash met Atheel al-Najafi, the head of the Hadba movement who expects to become Ninawa’s new governor, to discuss the tensions and the province’s future.

Iraqis still have to fear their human rights will be abused, despite the increased level of security, according to the newly released U.S. State Department’s Human Rights Report: Iraq.
–

Few details emerge about strange South Korea-Iraq oil deal

Published
by
Iraq Oil Report
on February 24, 2009
in The Biz
. 0 Comments

Plus:
*Ghadban: Iraq oil workers will bring back production
*Electricity Minister: France welcome to build nuclear plant
*Iraq Oil Ministry gets 38 applications for second round of oil and gas field bids
*Get your second round company list only at Iraq Oil Report
*Pipeline to Syria makes news, no construction yet
*Int’l Unions take Iraq Government, ministries to task for labor violations
*Alive in Baghdad: new video
*Much more in Oil, Energy, Economics and Security, Society & Politics

South Korea will provide Iraq with $3.55 billion worth of infrastructure in return for oil field stakes, the Energy Ministry said, Angela Moon reports for Reuters. South Korea would be given rights to the fields in southern Basra, which covers the majority of Iraq’s crude output. In exchange, Seoul would build infrastructure such as power plants and generators, the ministry said in a statement.

Heejin Koo and Shinhye Kang for Bloomberg and the JoongAng Dailyprovide a few more details.

But it’s not clear how Iraqi President Jalal Talabani has the authority to sign an oil deal for a Basra field, especially as two bidding rounds for 19 oil or gas deals are commencing this year. South Korean firms, also, must address political disputes they are part of: by signing multiple oil deals with Iraq’s Kurdistan Regional Government – Talabani is a top Kurdish politician – those companies risk being blacklisted from the rest of Iraq.

It will take nearly a year for Iraq to claw oil production back to a post-war high hit last May and Baghdad aims to rely on its own manpower to do so, a top official said on Tuesday, Peg Mackey reports for Reuters.

Alarmed by the loss of output from its reliable southern oilfields, Baghdad sent a high-powered committee to investigate and devise a quick fix. Thamir Ghadhban, energy adviser to Iraq’s prime minister, and other officials spent December trudging through oilfields, inspecting wells and meeting those who run the vast network that straddles a third of the world’s oil reserves.

“We are confident they can restore our production. We cannot wait for the international oil companies.”
This will not affect Iraq’s plans to lure the world’s top multinationals to help develop oil and gas fields that are already pumping — although these still face opposition from Iraqis who favour even greater self reliance, he said.

Ghadhban, former Iraqi oil minister Ibrahim Bahr al-Uloum and others on the committee chaired by Deputy Prime Minister Barham Salih will present their findings and roll out a recovery scheme at a conference in Baghdad which starts on Friday.

Electricity Minister Karim Wahid invited France to help Iraq build a nuclear power plant, three decades after Paris constructed a reactor near Baghdad that was bombed by Israeli warplanes, Agence Presse-France reports.“I am willing to enter into contacts with the French nuclear agency and to start to build a nuclear power plant, because the future is nuclear,” he said. “This is my perspective.”

Thirty-eight international oil companies registered at the Iraqi oil ministry to bid for the 11 groups of oil and gas fields put up for a second bidding round by Iraq at the end of last year, a senior Iraqi oil official said Tuesday, Hassan Hafidh reports for Dow Jones Newswires.

More than 100 applied to bid in a first round of 8 oil and gas fields, of which 41 were prequalified. Reuters reports Iraq will announce second round qualifiers by the end of March.

Here are the companies, in a list obtained by Iraq Oil Report (click to enlarge):

iraq-2nd-round

The Ministry of Oil is seeking foreign help to repair a rickety pipeline linking Iraqi oil fields to terminals in Syria, Azzaman reports. “The ministry has issued tenders for companies willing to do the repairs which will have to be carried out in coordination with the Syrian authorities,” ministry spokesman Assem Jihad said. If repaired, the pipeline should carry at least 200,000 barrels of Iraqi crude daily to international markets, the official said.

The Iraqi government plans to speed up multibillion dollar energy projects with Syria that would help end tension between the two neighbours, Iraq’s first ambassador to Syria in almost 30 years said, Khaled Yacoub Oweis reports for Reuters. The projects — an oil pipeline linking Kirkuk oilfield to a Mediterranean terminal and developing an Iraqi gas field near Syria — have been delayed, with Baghdad criticising Damascus for what it describes as insufficient cooperation on stopping rebel infiltration across the 600 km (375-mile) border.

“I expect substantial progress. What I heard directly from the leadership of my country is that Iraq is serious and ready to remove the obstacles standing in the way of these two strategic projects,” Ala al-Jawadi told Reuters.

Foster Wheeler has been awarded a contract by Iraq’s South Oil Company for the basic engineering of new oil export facilities, to supplement the existing Al-Basra terminal in Iraq, according to a company statement. The new offshore facilities will include new single point mooring tanker loading buoys, together with oil pumping, metering and pipelines, to achieve an export capacity of 4.5 million barrels per day.

This is following on the ongoing effort by Iraq’s Oil Ministry to fix and expand the southern export option, which requires major upgrades to avoid massive oil spills, let alone added capacity to meet Iraq’s export goals.

India’s BGR Energy Systems Ltd oil and gas equipment division has won a contract worth $8.57 million from Iraq, to design, manufacture and supply 14 floating- and fixed-roof steel storage tanks, the Business Standard reports. The scope of the contract includes design and supply of Tanks and other systems viz., Fire Protection, Floating Roof Seal, Cathodic Protection, Mixers and Tank Radar Gauges to Karbala Oil Products Depot in Iraq.

Operations at Iraq’s largest oil refinery were crippled on Sunday by a power shortage, a refinery official said. A power glitch reduced operations at the plant in Baiji, 180 km (112 miles) north of Baghdad, to around 20 percent of capacity around 8 p.m. local time (1700 GMT) on Sunday evening, Abdul Qader Saab, the refinery’s deputy manager, told Reuters.

Iraq seeks to diversify revenues: Planning minister says Iraq aims to boost farming, industry, religious tourism amid tumbling oil prices, Sammy Ketz reports for Middle East Online. Iraq, which sits on the world’s third largest known petroleum reserves, wants to diversify its revenues in the light of the tumbling price of crude oil, Planning Minister Ali Baban said on Sunday.

“There are many risks, there are many threats unfortunately to the Iraqi situation. But the threat of economic collapse is among the most dangerous and severe threats,” Baban told Reuters’ Aseel Kami and Michael Christie. “It is not urgent now for this year. But I think if the decline in oil revenues continues, the threat will be serious. We will face a very critical situation in 2010.”

Iraqi Agriculture Minister Ali Hussein al-Bahadli said on Monday that the current agricultural season is facing tough times maintaining production rates due to scarce rains, calling for securing the country’s water from the levels of the rivers Tigris and Euphrates, Voices of Iraq reports.

A leading international union group has called on Iraq’s government to break away from Saddam Hussein-era regulations that prevent free association for workers.

The International Trade Union Confederation said in a statement:

The ITUC understands the Chair government committee supervising the elections has said that he would not prevent public sector workers from organising their own trade union elections, but that these unions would not be recognised since Law 52 does not allow it. As a result, some public sector unions have indicated they wish to hold trade union elections, while others have decided not to in light of the legal situation. The situation is further complicated by the fact that there are both private and public sector workers in the membership of the six unions which are holding officially-recognised elections. In addition, the controversial August 2005 Order 8750 freezes all trade union assets and financial accounts. The application of this order would only be re-assessed and possibly suspended after union elections are held, and only for those unions allowed to take part in the officially-recognised elections.

The ITUC also sent a letter to Prime Minister Maliki requesting better cooperation with the U.N.’s International Labor Organization.

Canadian oil company Niko Resources has started a seismic acquisition programme at the Qara Dagh block in Iraq’s Kurdistan region, Middle East Economic Digest Reports. Niko operates the field as part of a consortium with another Canadian firm, Vast Exploration.

Iraq’s Ministry of Industry & Minerals is being targeted by international union groups over its alleged “severe interrogations” of a Petrochemicals Complex union leader, who was detained after leading workers in protest over back pay. According to the International Federation of Chemical, Energy, Mine and General Workers’ Unions, Kareem Johi Sahan, a trade union leader for the Petrochemical Workers’ Union of Basra, faces punishment Thursday which could include a pay decrease or being fired.

Security, Society & Politics

A new war is threatening Iraq just as the world believes the country is returning to peace. While violence is dropping in Baghdad and in the south of the country, Arabs and Kurds in the north are beginning to battle over territories in an arc of land stretching from Syria to Iranian border, Patrick Cockburn reports for The Independent. A renewal of the historic conflict between Arabs and Kurds in Iraq, which raged through most of the second half of the 20th century, would seriously destabilise the country as it begins to recover from the US occupation and the Sunni-Shia civil war of 2005-07.

American troops in Iraq are beginning to pull back from bases and outposts that were linchpins in the U.S. surge that helped reduce violence, prevent a civil war and allow peaceful elections, Richard Tomkins reports for The Washington Times.

Well over half the exhibition halls in Iraq’s National Museum are closed, darkened and in disrepair. And yet the museum, whose looting in 2003 became a symbol of the chaos that followed the American invasion, officially reopened on Monday, Steven Lee Myers reports for The New York Times. Thousands of works from its collection of antiquities and art — some of civilization’s earliest objects — remain lost.

Alive in Baghdad: Journalists in Danger Despite Drop in Censorship

Journalism in Iraq is a deadly business. The Committee to Protect Journalism, an international NGO focusing on dangers for journalists worldwide, has repeatedly ranked Iraq as one of the deadliest countries for journalists to work in. In this week’s episode of Alive in Baghdad, we bring you an interview with Hassan Fadhel Allah al-Hussaini, the editor of Rayat al-Arab newspaper in Baghdad. He offers us a personal perspective on the wide variety of dangers facing journalists in Iraq. At the same time he reminds us of these dangers, Hassan remains faithful. “All Iraqis now are working by way of a miracle,” he tells us. “Everyone who walks in the street, every student who goes to school or university…all of them are working by a miracle, because death is pursuing them in every moment and place.”

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s effort to have a special military unit report directly to him is raising concerns that he is accumulating too much power and following in the footsteps of Saddam Hussein, Jim Michaels reports for USA Today. Al-Maliki’s government proposed legislation that would make permanent the placement of Iraq’s special forces outside the purview of the Defense and Interior ministries, which supervise most security forces.

Ayad Allawi, a former prime minister and critic of the current government, said the proposed law is a dangerous throwback to Saddam’s days. “It mimics very much the old days of darkness,” Allawi said. The legislation would institutionalize a power shift. In April 2007, al-Maliki issued a directive establishing the counterterrorism bureau separate from the Defense and Interior ministries. A law would establish a separate budget for the agency.

The bureau controls about 4,000 Iraqi special forces, which are among the best-trained forces in the nation’s military. They are used to target high-level al-Qaeda and Shiite militia leaders. U.S. officials in Iraq did not want to comment on Iraqi legislation but said the current arrangement is not subject to abuse. “It’s for (the Iraqis) to decide how they want to set up their agencies,” said Lt. Col. Gary Kolb, a military spokesman in Baghdad.

An Iraqi lawmaker on Monday blasted accusations that he’d ordered mafia-like murders, charging that the case was politically motivated because of his hard-line stance on human rights issues, Trenton Daniel reports for McClatchy Newspapers.

The Iraqi military says that Sunni Muslim Arab lawmaker Mohammed al Dayni orchestrated a string of deadly attacks that ranged from burying his rivals alive to hiring a suicide bomber who killed one person and wounded 22 others in a cafeteria in Baghdad’s fortified Green Zone.

The Iraqi military based the warrant on statements given by two former bodyguards of Dayni’s, one of whom is his nephew.

Dayni’s former bodyguards, he added, made their statements after being beaten. “They were tortured heavily,” he said. “These confessions need proof.” Lawmakers called for a committee to study the Dayni case.

Twelve Iraqi police officers have been arrested in connection with a string of kidnappings and killings, including the killing of the sister of one of Iraq’s vice presidents, a spokesman for the Interior Ministry said Monday, Campbell Robertson reports for The New York Times.

Nacham Jaleel Kadim, 23, lives with her remaining daughter in a trailer park for war widows and their families in one of the poorest parts of Iraq’s capital, Timothy Williams reports for The New York Times.

That makes her one of the lucky ones. The trailer park, called Al Waffa, or “Park of the Grateful,” is among the few aid programs available for Iraq’s estimated 740,000 widows. It houses 750 people. As the number of widows has swelled during six years of war, their presence on city streets begging for food or as potential recruits by insurgents has become a vexing symbol of the breakdown of Iraqi self-sufficiency.

A Military Tactician’s Political Strategy: In Defending the Troop Increase, Commander Paved Way for a ‘Long War,’ Thomas E. Ricks reports for The Washington Post. As Gen. David H. Petraeus flew into Baghdad in February 2007, preparing to take command of U.S. forces in Iraq, Col. Peter R. Mansoor, his executive officer, knelt alongside his seat. “You know, sir,” he said, “the hardest thing for you, if it comes to it, will be to tell the American people and the president that this isn’t working.”

–

Baiji sees corruption cleanup, saving Iraq oil from smugglers

Published
by
Iraq Oil Report
on February 19, 2009
in Economy, Headline and Video
. 1 Comment

Plus much more in this long-weekend edition of Iraq Oil Report, including updates on more going on in the oil and electricity sector, election results revealed, and the status of key security, societal and economic issues. A must read:

One might call them the Batman and Robin of the Bayji oil refinery.
Together Ali al-Obaidi, director-general of the Northern Oil Company, and his sidekick, Colonel Adil al-Jamali, commander of the Bayji oil police, have become a formidable crime-fighting duo at Iraq’s largest oil refinery, Anna Fitfield reports for the Financial Times.

“Everyone knows this place had the worst corruption in Iraq – they said $1bn a year was being lost here,” says Mr Obaidi at his office in the refinery 190km north of Baghdad. “Gangs, mafias, al-Qaeda, everyone was trying to steal from this depot.”

The arrival of Mr Obaidi and Col Jamali at the refinery’s production facility in late 2007 began to put an end to much of the theft.

“When I first came to the refinery I found guards were bringing their own containers to work to steal gasoline, and they did not respect their bosses because their bosses were also stealing,” Col Jamali says. “Corruption was like a cancer in the system, so I fired hundreds of men, to change the blood.”

Iraq’s Oil Ministry will award a service contract to develop a prized oil field in southern Iraq next month, Sinan Salaheddin reports for The Associated Press.

Italy’s Eni SpA, Spain’s Repsol and Japan’s Nippon Oil are competing for the service contract to develop the Nasiriyah oil field. The contract is designed to offer engineering, procurement and construction services.
Iraq’s deputy oil minister, Ahmed al-Shamaa also divulged the ministry’s plans to develop part of another prized oil field in central Iraq - the East Baghdad field.

Turkey’s pipeline company Botas is in talks with Sharjah-based Dana Gas on the proposed project to send Iraq’s natural gas north to Turkey. Iraq Directory reports the gas would feed the proposed Nabucco pipeline, a project backed by the Europe and the United States as a non-Russian gas supply. Nabucco has yet to commence because, in part, of a lack of supply commitments. There’s no counting on Iraq, however, for that guarantee, as the country has yet to determine how it will develop its natural gas resources. Iraq is flaring most of its natural gas, almost all produced during oil production. It is in talks with Shell to create a joint venture dedicated to natural gas, and is offering gas fields for international bidders. Iraqi residents, and current and future power plants and other domestic industry are in need of gas, which will make exporting the resource a hard political sell until the needs at home are met.

Norwegian oil firm DNO says it has “commenced the remaining work” to hook its Tawke oil field in the KRG contract to the pipeline sending Iraqi crude to Turkey. In a end 2008 results statement, the company says “the initial drilling phase on the Tawke field was completed as the gross initial cumulative well capacity from the field is significantly in excess of the 50,000 bopd capacity of the Tawke facilities.”

As a result of the good progress made on the Tawke development during 2008 we are now preparing for increased production at low cost from a substantial reserve base, without further investments. This put us in a good position to meet the challenges and opportunities in today’s market
- Helge Eide, Managing Director of DNO International ASA.

Today, Iraqi Navy and coalition forces are working together to protect the platforms from harm. By Dec. 2009, the Iraqi Navy will take full responsibility for the Khwar Al Amaya Oil Terminal and the security of a proportion of the nation’s oil wealth, according to a Multi-National Force-Iraq statement.

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki on Thursday said that Iraq will establish open relations with France in the fields of armament, oil, in addition to other sectors, Voices of Iraq reports.

Spanish government showed readiness to present loan to Iraq to buy an electricity station to revive marshes in Missan province, according to a release from Iraq’s National Media Center.

British forces in Basra are less focused on security and more on economic development, the BBC’s Jim Muir reports as he embeds with British forces giving Japanese businessmen a tour of their investments:

As part of that revised mandate, here they were ferrying a delegation of Japanese economic officials around the south, where Tokyo is pumping in hundred of millions of dollars in soft loans. …

We had landed at the Basra oil refinery, where the visitors were given a warm welcome by director-general Tha’ir Ibrahim and his staff.

“Now that security is so much better, we’re launching projects to increase the refinery capacity by about 35% and to upgrade the product specification,” said Mr Ibrahim.

“The tank farm [oil depot] here was 60% destroyed during the war with Iran in the 1980s, and then hit again by the Coalition during the occupation of Kuwait in 1990.”

“Now the Coalition are helping us rehabilitate the plant. That’s life!”

The Japanese delegation were as delighted as their hosts at being able finally to visit projects which they have been involved in from afar for years, without being able to see them on the ground for security reasons.

“I really feel the big change over the past year, and I feel really safe here,” said delegation leader Hideki Matsunaga, who heads the Middle East department at the Japanese International Co-operation Agency.
“Of course there are still risks and some incidents and so on, but that’s the same all over the world.”

Elections & Politics

Iraq’s Kurdish-Arab tensions threaten to escalate into war, Leila Fadel reports for McClatchy Newspapers. Iraq’s Jan. 31 provincial elections have been hailed as a sign that the country is putting its violent past behind it, is moving toward democracy and no longer is in need of a large U.S. military force. Along a 300-mile strip of disputed territory that stretches across northern Iraq, however, the elections have rekindled the longstanding hostility between Sunni Muslim Arabs and Sunni Kurds, and there are growing fears that war could erupt.

Al Hadbaa, an Arab nationalist party with some Kurdish and other members that vowed to retake disputed territory from the Kurdish security forces, halt Kurdish expansion and eject Kurdish militias, won 47 percent of the vote in predominantly Arab Nineveh, according to the preliminary election results. That means the Kurds will lose control of the provincial council.

Meanwhile, Voice of America reports the prime minister of Iraq’s Kurdistan regional government says the United States must help resolve pending Kurdish issues before withdrawing from Iraq. Nechirvan Barzani appealed for U.S. support this week on the constitutional article (Article 140) governing territorial disputes, and the oil and gas law.

(editor’s note: while Barzani’s comments warrant mention, VOA isn’t too accurate on details, such as its insistence that revenue sharing disputes have derailed the oil law.)

Rahmat al-Salaam reports for Asharq Alawsat an Iraqi MP close to Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki says that statements made by Nechirvan Barzani, Kurdistan Region prime minister, about a war breaking out between Arabs and Kurds after the American withdrawal from Iraq, are “a disservice to the political situation in the country.”

With election results officially in, the best place to turn as usual is Reidar Visser at Historiae.org, and he includes a breakdown of Prime Minister Maliki’s province by province victories.

Visser writes:

After today’s official release by the Iraqi elections commission of the seat allocation in the new Iraqi provincial councils elected on 31 January, the process of forming new coalitions can begin in earnest. …

The new councils will meet within 15 days to elect their new officials, and new coalitions will have to be formed in this period. Precisely because of the relatively homogenous political map now after the seat allocation, the ongoing negotiations among party elites in Baghdad could have enormous significance.

Allies of Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki will take control of the southern oil hub of Basra after winning 20 out of 36 provincial council seats in local elections last month, Khalid al-Ansary reports for Reuters. Six of the seats allocated to Maliki’s State of Law coalition were assigned to women, Usama al-Ani, deputy head of the independent electoral commission, told a news conference.

Following the poor performance of the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council (SIIC) – also known as the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI) — in recent parliamentary elections, Sa’ad Salloum of Niqash sat down with Adel Abdul-Mahdi, Vice-President of Iraq and a leading SIIC member, to discuss the election and the SIIC response.
Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s growing post-election strength means opponents – and once allies – the Kurdistan Alliance and the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq parties are looking at ways to limit his power, if not see him removed from his post, Ma’ad Fayad reports for Asharq Alawsat.

Kuwait’s deputy prime minister will go to Iraq in March in what will be the first high-level visit of a Kuwaiti official since Saddam Hussein’s 1990 invasion of the tiny Gulf state, Aseel Kami reports for Reuters.

President Jalal Talabani agreed on Tuesday to share power within his Kurdish party to avoid a split which would have weakened the group ahead of polls in northern Iraq. Agence France-Presse reports Talabani, who is chief of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), “accepted the demands of the five leaders who submitted their resignations, so as to prevent them leaving the party.” Kosrat Rassoul, who is vice president of the Kurdistan regional government in northern Iraq, said he was resigning along with four members of the political office. Efforts to fight corruption and improve democracy in both the regional government and the PUK were among the issues in dispute.

Frank-Walter Steinmeier, Germany’s foreign minister, met Iraqi leaders and boosted economic links during a surprise visit, as a key opponent of the US-led invasion joined rebuilding efforts, Agence-France Presse reports.

On the heels of a strong showing for his political party in recent provincial elections, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki is reaching out to industrialized nations in an effort to help turn around his war-torn nation, Trenton Daniel reports for McClatchy Newspapers. ”Iraq needs construction. Iraq needs investment. Iraq needs infrastructure,” said Maliki’s close advisor, Sadiq al Rikabi, who added that another high-ranking European official would arrive in the coming days. “We need to deal with industrialized nations to rebuild Iraq.”

Steinmeier, on the first visit to Baghdad by a German foreign minister in two decades, held talks with Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, President Jalal Talabani and his Iraqi counterpart Hoshyar Zebari.

Before heading home, Steinmeier stopped in the KRG to officially open a consulate there. “We are very pleased by this historic visit and invite Germany to participate in rebuilding the Region,” KRG Prime Minister Nechirvan Barzani said at the ceremony.

Of course, Germany has already been represented in Iraq’s Kurdish region:
getarticleadvertimageservlet

Iraqonomics

Iraqi lawmakers will resume work next week on approving the oil producing country’s 2009 budget, despite failing once more on Thursday to select a new parliament speaker, Waleed Ibrahim and Aseel Kami report for Reuters.

Umm Qasr, Iraq’s only deepwater port, is bustling with activity. A large proportion of the country’s imports pass through its docks but, as a critical artery for the nation, it offers a glimpse into the state of Iraq’s faltering economy after years of sanctions and war. While imports flow in, there are no goods going in the opposite direction; many of its outdated cranes do not work; and it is far behind the rest of the world in terms of the size of vessels it can accommodate, Andrew England reports for the Financial Times.

Security & Society

The trial of the Iraqi television journalist who threw his shoes at President Bush was adjourned after 90 minutes on Thursday until March 12. But the brief appearance of the journalist, Muntader al-Zaidi, who has been incarcerated since he threw the shoes during a news conference in Baghdad on Dec. 14, was enough to trigger applause and shouting both in the courtroom and in the hallways outside, Campbell Robertson reports for The New York Times. The law under which Mr. Zaidi has been charged applies to offenses against a foreign leader on a formal visit; if the visit is found to be informal, a largely technical point, it will cast the matter onto less certain legal ground.

McClatchy Newspapers’ Trenton Daniel reports of the trial when Iraqi journalist Muntathar al Zaidi took the stand Thursday, he said that he hadn’t planned to hurl his shoes at President George W. Bush, but the sight of the smirking leader at a Baghdad news conference got the best of him. “He had an icy smile with no blood or spirit,” said Zaidi, who was enclosed in a wooden pen. “At that moment, I only saw Bush, and the whole world turned black. I was feeling the blood of innocent people moving under his feet.”

Four prisoners who were being held at the American prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, have been sent back to their home country, Iraq, where they are being interrogated, Marc Santora reports for The New York Times. “The government is reviewing their files to see if there are any charges against them,” said Wijdan Mikhail Salim, the minister of human rights. If they are not found guilty of any crimes, she said, they will be released.

Alive in Bagdad: Hospitals Improve Slowly

In this episode of Alive in Baghdad, we talk to several Iraqis: doctors, patients and hospital administrators, each of whom offers us a unique, yet notably hopeful, perspective on Iraq’s health care system.

Iraq’s wars and crises over recent years and decades have left over one and a half million children as orphans, disabled or with special needs, Hussein al-Shummari reports for Niqash. Today, in the ‘new’ Iraq, these children are struggling to find a path to a better future as medical facilities and government assistance remain woefully inadequate.

Commanders of the former army have set several conditions for the government to meet before considering reconciliation. Azzaman reports on top of their demands come the cancellation of a notorious law called debaathification and ridding the current armed forces of sectarian affiliations.

“We only want a normal life,” says Um Qasim, sitting in a bombed out building in Baghdad.< She and others around have been saying that for years, Dahr Jamail reports for Inter Press Service. Um Qasim lives with 13 family members in a brick shanty on the edge of a former military intelligence building in the Mansoor district of Baghdad. Five of her children are girls. Homelessness is not easy for anyone, but it is particularly challenging for women and girls.

Turkey is likely to play a prominent role as the US begins to remove thousands of tons of equipment and supplies from Iraq over the next year or so. Gordon Lubold reports for The Christian Science Monitor the American military has been quietly shipping construction materials, food, fuel, and other nonlethal items into Iraq through Turkey using a two-lane commercial border crossing known as the Habur Gate in southeastern Turkey.

The war in Iraq isn’t over. The main events may not even have happened yet, Thomas E. Ricks reports for The Washington Post:

Many of those closest to the situation in Iraq expect a full-blown civil war to break out there in the coming years. “I don’t think the Iraqi civil war has been fought yet,” one colonel told me. Others were concerned that Iraq was drifting toward a military takeover. Counterinsurgency expert David Kilcullen worried that the classic conditions for a military coup were developing — a venal political elite divorced from the population lives inside the Green Zone, while the Iraqi military outside the zone’s walls grows both more capable and closer to the people, working with them and trying to address their concerns.

–

Security of Iraq oil expected to improve with Umm Qasr port revamp

Published
by
Iraq Oil Report
on February 16, 2009
in Economy, Headline and Video
. 1 Comment

Plus:
*After the Istanbul meetings with international oil companies
*Now Prime Minister Maliki takes charge
*Electricity Ministry reaches out to Iran, Syria, Turkey counterparts
*Obama calls Turkish leaders, talks include Iraq
*Japan makes pre-loan visit to Basra
*U.S. says Western investment incoming
*Pres. Talabani’s party in limbo
*Much more

The Iraqi Navy is paying the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to revamp part of Umm Qasr port in southern Iraq, the first Iraq to U.S.ACE Foreign Military Sales project and vital to securing oil exports.

The Iraqi government in effect has contracted Corps’ Gulf Region Division for a $53 million rehabilitation of the Umm Qasr pier and seawall near the Kuwait border on the western side of the al-Faw Peninsula, which juts into the Persian Gulf, Ben Lando reports for United Press International.

More than 70 percent of Iraq’s oil exports are sent to market via Gulf tankers. Southern oil infrastructure has been less affected by violence than that in the north since 2003. Tucked between Kuwait and Iran, however, the path for most of Iraq’s oil exports — on which the country is dependent — has seen two wars and faces piracy and other threats from the water.

Rendition of future Umm Qasr pier and seawall, provided by U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

Rendition of future Umm Qasr pier and seawall, provided by U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

When completed, both Iraqi navy and other boats, tasked with protecting the terminals where oil is loaded into ships, will have a berthing facility and headquarters.

“This project further strengthens the Iraqi navy’s ability to protect the nation’s sovereign waters, including its oil infrastructure,” said Maj. Gen. Michael Eyre, commanding general of the Army Corps of Engineers’ Gulf Region Division. “The Iraqi navy is also charged with customs control and anti-piracy.

“The Iraqi navy’s main mission is to protect the oil pipelines and platforms in the Arab Gulf, ensuring that Iraq’s primary export and source of funding is secured and protected. It is crucial that this project be constructed and be done in a timely manner.”

Rendition of future Umm Qasr pier and seawall, provided by U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

Rendition of future Umm Qasr pier and seawall, provided by U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

Iraqi oil officials say any foreign oil firm awarded a development deal must start work within six months of signing. Reuters’ Simon Webb reports Abdul Mahdy al-Ameedi, deputy director general at Iraq’s petroleum contracts and licensing directorate, explained the requirement to journalists on the sidelines of meetings with prospective firms in Istanbul.

“If any company has been awarded a contract and it doesn’t mobilize and perform activities on the ground six months from the effective date,” Ameedi said, “the contract will be terminated.”

- Companies to submit bids in May; awarded by ministry in June; approved by Iraqi cabinet within two months.
- Unless changed by politics or new hydrocarbons legisltation, Parliament not required to approve deals.
- Companies fear security, changes in law or government may change terms of the deal.
- Deals will be for 20 years to develop largest oil fields in the country.
- Contract to include 5 percent annual rate of oil production decline, companies to have 76 percent share of joint venture for developing field, with state firm getting 25 percent – boons for foreign investors.
- Anadarko, BG, Premier, Wintershall not bidding on deals; Turkish Petroleum Corp. part of consortium, not operator.

The Chinese National Petroleum Corp. is talking with American companies to join as partners in bidding for all fields up for bid, Webb reports in another piece.

There a lot of little snippets of much larger events at work in Iraqi media, and Iraq Oil Report will provide you core quotes and links. Very interesting are the beginnings of meetings on oil policy led by Prime Minister Maliki:

Apparently Maliki himself chaired a meeting which included Oil Minister Shahristani and former ministers Thamir Ghadban and Ibrahim Bahr al-Uloum, Voices of Iraq reports.

The minister and directors of the ministry presented explanation to PM concerning ministry activity, obstacles, challenges, future plans and projects to develop oil sector, according to a Council of Ministers statement.

In a visit to Karbala Sunday, Shahristani said Iraq has 100 more years worth of oil when the country is fully explored, Voices of Iraq reports.

Iraqi Vice President Tareq al-Hashemi, after hearing about the dispute between the Oil Ministry and the Kurdistan Regional Government over control of signing deals, said “There are good intentions to put a prompt end and to find a solution that is acceptable to all parties. Oil experts and economists have been summoned from the Kurdistan region to discuss the entire issue with the committee, which we hope will come up with recommendations and positive solutions,” Voices of Iraq reports.

Iraq’s Electricity Ministry is organizing a conference with neighbors Iran, Turkey and Syria. It comes during obvious tense but evolving relations between two invitees and the United States, and President Obama’s outreach to Turkey.

Electricity Minister Karim Waheed Hasan invited Hilmi Guler, Turkey’s energy minister, last week, Voices of Iraq reports.

The minister met with Turkey’s ambassador a business delegation involved with building new power plants. He said in a statement “a neighboring country of Iraq and its gateway to Europe, hence why Turkish and European firms should be encouraged to work in Iraq.”

Obama called both Turkey’s prime minister and president earlier Monday. According to the White House press office:

The President emphasized the importance of the United States’ alliance with Turkey and said he looks forward to working with both President Gul and Prime Minister Erdogan on a broad agenda of mutual strategic interest.… In both calls, the leaders discussed a number of current issues, including U.S. support for the growing Turkish-Iraqi relationship, the importance of cooperation in Middle East peace efforts, and the U.S. review on Afghanistan and Pakistan policy.

British troops in Basra are on their way out, with already 2,000 U.S. troops taking over the southern outpost. The Americans are making it their own, and are more at ease than the British first were, with security much improved, Michael Evans reports for The Times.

The activity has brought a distinct end-of-an-era feeling to Basra. The American troops have changed the name of the Basra airport base from Contingency Operating Base to Camp Charlie and introduced their Mail Post Exchange shopping malls and burger bars. …

The realization that the British are leaving seems not to bother the people of Basra city, who now no longer worry about security. They do complain that they still have limited electricity supplies, jobs are scarce and the sewerage system is dire.

Not all is well in Iraq, though; there is still a war going on six years after the invasion, Scott Fontaine reports for The News Tribune reporting in Salahadin province:

A faint boom echoed through the calm. For the soldiers of the 571st Sapper Company from Fort Lewis, Wash., it was unmistakable.

“That was a bomb, wasn’t it?” asked one soldier riding in the lead of a six-vehicle convoy.

“Roger, that was a bomb,” another replied.

In the first full-scale government inspection since a Ground Self-Defense Force unit withdrew in 2006, Japanese officials recently visited Basra in southern Iraq to pave the way for yen-loan-financed reconstruction projects, the Kyodo News Agency reports. During the two-day visit from Monday, the six met Iraqi officials of the fertilizer plant in Khor Al-Zubair and the South Refineries Company in Basra as well as authorities of Umm Qasr port. Japanese companies have been involved in the construction of the three areas.

The U.N. says Iraqi unemployment and underemployment is 28 percent and, Tina Susman reports for the Los Angeles Times, a large percentage are young men.

One of the most troubling pieces of the report concerns the percentage of young men out of work: 28% of those ages 15 to 29 are unemployed. U.S. and Iraqi military and political officials have long warned that these are the people most vulnerable to recruitment by insurgent groups if they are left without income for too long. Women also are disproportionately out of work. Only 17% have jobs, a low number compared to neighboring countries. In Iran, 42% of women are in the labor force; in Jordan, 29%; in Kuwait, 52%.

Beware of confusion in interpreting these numbers, such as the Agence France-Presse article that relates unemployment data to over-employment in the government.

A top U.S. official in Baghdad says foreign – including Western – investment is on the way. “We may well be at a turning point, frankly. We’ve heard this before, but the conditions are lining up that there could be significant interest being shown by Western companies,” Marc Wall, the top U.S. economic official in Baghdad, told Reuters’ Missy Ryan.

Wall signalled that a sharp drop in violence, coupled with perceptions of progress for Iraq’s fragile democracy, may put to rest the concerns that have so far kept major Western investment, especially in Iraq’s lucrative oil sector, at bay.

Foreign investment will be one of the keys to transforming Iraq’s economy, now almost entirely reliant on oil and unable so far to fuel broad-based growth, into an engine that can create jobs and rebuild the country after years of war.

When the Bush administration led the invasion to oust Saddam Hussein in 2003, Washington promised to reinvent an economy frozen in time, and establish a flourishing, modern free market.

Six years and tens of thousands of deaths later, many Iraqis complain that life is no better than it was under Saddam.

A delicate balance of power between the two most powerful Kurdish parties may be upset by the resignation of five leaders of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, led by Jalal Talabani, the president of Iraq. CNN reports Talabani allies say it is about control over money, power politics, and questions as to how money is spent in the Kurdistan region.

U.S. contractors and Indiana National Guardsman say KBR, the company they worked for or were guarding, respectively, as part of an early invasion oil reconstruction project, knew of the exposure to toxic, cancerous chemicals, the Houston Chronicle reports. KBR denies the implication, which was made in a federal lawsuit.

There is less water now in the Tigris, and it is less clean, Dahr Jamail reports for Inter Press Service. The river has fewer fish, and rising fuel and other costs mean they are more costly to catch. It’s not, as Hamza Majit finds, a good time to be a fisher.

Iraqis squatting in abandoned government buildings since the 2003 invasion will be moved to 5,000 units being built south of Baghdad. Iraqis have complained of being treated harshly by the government.

“The residential complex will be built in Mada’in area and will include 5,000 residential units which will be distributed to the squatters,” Moyeen al-Kadhimi, Head of Baghdad’s Provincial Council, according to the U.N. humanitarian office.

On 4 January, the Iraqi government announced that it was giving all squatters on government property – including land, houses, residential buildings and offices –60 days to leave or face legal action. In return, the government said it would give squatters between US$850 to$4,300 to find alternative accommodation.

However, later in January, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said he was postponing the order until further notice as he was campaigning for the provincial elections, which were held on 31 January.

Iraq’s national museum will not reopen next Monday, as earlier reported, with Iraq’s Culture Ministry saying it was surprised by the tourism and antiquities ministry announcement. The physical memory of Iraq was devastated following the 2003 invasion.

“The museum is not qualified and organized to be opened,” Jabir al-Jabiri, the senior deputy at the Culture Ministry, told The New York Times’ Steven Lee Myers.
–

Iraq oil contract disputed in new report commissioned by Parliament energy committee

Published
by
Iraq Oil Report
on February 13, 2009
in Politics
. 0 Comments

Plus:
*Read the entire draft Technical Service Contract
*Oil Ministry gives more info on oil fields to companies
*Russia’s Lukoil, Italy’s Edison express interest in fields on Istanbul sidelines
*Missan Oil Co. preps for new well drilling
*Technip awarded new Karbala refinery
*Oil to Jordan slowed by technicalities
*Violence rocks powder keg Mosul, Shiite pilgrimage
*Ex-Women’s Affairs minister says male-dominated Iraq politics a sham
*KRG enhances women’s access to politics
*Sadr calls on former coalition to reform
*Iran FM finishes Iraq tour in Kurdistan region and Basra

The contract that Iraq’s Oil Ministry is using to lure oil field development by the world’s largest oil companies has been panned in an analysis conducted at the request of Parliament’s Energy Committee chairman, whose party opposes the oil minister, and it adds to the troubles ahead for Iraq’s oil politics.

Ben Lando reports for United Press International details of the contract are evolving as the Oil Ministry and international oil companies meet in Istanbul this week. While the ministry is wary of criticism that foreign firms are given too much room in Iraq’s oil sector, it also must address claims that Iraq’s oil policy should be decentralized.

The report, obtained by United Press International, questions whether the contract will give international oil companies the incentive to keep costs low and sufficiently guard against graft.

The report is also being viewed as politically motivated.

“I believe it definitely is,” Abdul-Hadi al-Hasani, deputy chairman of Parliament’s Oil, Gas and Natural Resources Committee, told UPI. “There is no doubt about it.”

Ali Balo, chairman of the committee, authored a Jan. 5 letter to Pedro van Meurs, president of the Van Meurs Corp. oil consultancy, requesting the analysis. Balo is a member of the Kurdistan Alliance, a major force in national politics. The alliance opposes Oil Minister Hussain al-Shahristani’s oil efforts, largely because Shahristani has labeled as illegal the controversial deals signed by the Kurdistan Regional Government, representing the three autonomous northern provinces. The KRG has called for Shahristani’s removal; Shahristani has blacklisted companies that signed with the KRG from oil purchases or future contracts.

The KRG last year hired van Meurs to author two reports, one analyzing the KRG’s oil terms — a production-sharing contract, favored by oil companies but opposed by the oil unions — and the other comparing the KRG contract to the draft national oil contract at the time. Both favored the KRG.

UPI was unable to reach Balo or the Oil Ministry spokesman.

In the analysis, van Meurs writes the Iraq Oil Ministry contract is “an improvement on drafts previously proposed by the Ministry.” As international oil companies bid to develop Iraq oil fields, however, the “process contemplated” in the contract “will not lead to transparency, and the possibility for changes to the contract after it has been approved and signed opens the door widely for improper practices.”

Read the entire article: Click Here

More documents:

Pedro van Meurs’ full report: Click Here

Letter of request from Ali Balo: Click Here

Draft Technical Service Contract between Iraq
and international oil companies, as of November 2008: Click Here

Iraq has offered international energy firms more data on the giant oil fields they will compete to work on after executives complained that existing information was inadequate for them to evaluate output potential, Simon Webb reports for Reuters.

Poor data gave international oil firms that had carried out technical studies on the fields since the invasion of Iraq an advantage in the bidding race, said executives from several oil companies participating in a three-day workshop hosted by Iraq.

Officials have cleared up some oil company doubts on the contracts and sweetened the terms but executives have raised other questions about transparency on contract awards both within and without the bid round.

Russian oil firm Lukoil is interested in bidding for at least two of the fields Iraq is offering in an oil and gas bidding round, two company sources said on Friday, Reuters reports. “We are interested in both the West Qurna and the Rumaila oilfields,” one source told Reuters, when asked for which fields Lukoil might bid.

Lukoil may join forces with U.S. major ConocoPhillips to bid for the fields, he added, speaking on condition of anonymity on the sidelines of a workshop between Iraqi officials and oil firms on the bidding round.

Italian utility Edison is interested in bidding for the two gas fields on offer in Iraq’s first oil and gas bidding round, a senior company executive said on Friday, Reuters reports in a separate article. Iraq is offering its Akkas and Mansuriyah gas fields as part of a bidding round that includes some of its most prized oil fields.

The Missan Oil Co. is readying equipment to drill new wells throughout the province, in the al-Fakka, al-Amara and Abu Gharab fields, Voices of Iraq reports. It’s part of an effort to boost MOC production above current 110,000 barrels per day. Technicians are nearly ready to start the Abu Nour oil field gas separation station.

Technip has been awarded by State Company Oil Project (SCOP) a lumpsum contract, worth more than €20 million, for the front-end engineering design (FEED) of a new refinery to be built in Karbala, Iraq, according to a company statement.

The refinery will have a total capacity of 140,000 barrels per day and will include 18 process units based on state-of-the-art technologies, as well as related utilities, offsite facilities, infrastructures and a dedicated power plant.

Technicalities hindering larger oil shipments from Iraq, which Iraq sells to Jordon at a discounted price. The average crude oil imports from Iraq delivered to the Jordan Petroleum Refinery Company (JPRC) stands at 10,000 barrels a day with chances of increasing the shipment to 30,000 barrels a day, according to a top executive at the company that transports the cargo, Hani Hazaimeh reports for the Jordan Times. Owner and general manager of Burj Al Urdun, Nayel Thiabat, told The Jordan Times on Thursday that the company’s fleet, comprising 150 Jordanian trucks and around 300 Iraqi trucks, has the capacity to increase the volume of imported crude, provided that the Iraqi government overcomes “technical problems” facing the transaction.

Security, Society & Politics

A suicide bomber killed almost three dozen Shiite Muslim pilgrims Friday while they were en route to a holy site in central Iraq, marking the third straight day of intense violence, Trenton Daniel reports for McClatchy Newspapers. The bombing came as officials prepared plan to release final election results next week. Earlier attacks targeted politicians and others.

At least 13 Iraqis were killed and 39 wounded on Thursday in a spate of attacks that included the assassination of a Sunni Arab political leader in the violent northern city of Mosul, security officials said, Sam Dagher reports for The New York Times. He was one of five Sunni political leaders to be killed since Dec. 31 in or near Mosul, where tensions between Arabs and Kurds are high and Sunni insurgents remain firmly entrenched.

Iraq Cabinet member’s exit raises gender, sectarian issues. It sounded like a dream job: $10,000 a month, a fleet of fancy cars, a house and best of all, said Nawal Samarai, a chance to improve the lives of widows and millions of other Iraqi women affected by the U.S.-led invasion and its aftermath, Tina Susman and Caesar Ahmed report for the Los Angeles Times. Samarai, a Sunni Arab, says she resigned because her ministry of women’s affairs was a fake office. Critics say such ‘ministers of state’ were appointed to fill quotas and lack real power. “I tried. I tried hard, but every time I asked for authority they’d tell me it’s not a real ministry, it’s just an office,” said Samarai.

Women to receive more seats in the parliament and the minimum age for the candidates who run for MP lowered to 25 years old from 30. Iraqi Kurdistan parliament on Wednesday, February 11, held an urgent session to amend the election law ahead of polls due on May 19, Kurdish Globe reports. The KRG is holding elections in May following local elections throughout most of the country last month.

Iraqi interpreters working with the U.S. military in Baghdad are again allowed to hide their identity during certain missions, after a Pentagon decision to grant battalion commanders the discretion to disregard an earlier policy banning interpreters from wearing masks, Ernesto Londono reports for The Washington Post.

Shiite leader Muqtada al-Sadr on Friday called for “renewing” the Shiite United Iraqi Alliance (UIA), of which he was part prior to withdrawal, welcoming the formation of fresh political alliances, Voices of Iraq reports. “We support the idea of renewing the former coalition into what should be called the United National Iraqi Alliance,” said Sadr in a statement published by his office in the holy Shiite city of Najaf.

While the coalition includes Prime Minister Maliki’s Dawa Party and the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, the two are at odds over oil policy and other national political issues. Iraq Oil Report is told there are discussions also between Dawa, Sadrists and Fadhila, a more nationalistic and strong central government coalition, excluding ISCI which is leaning toward the policies of the Kurdistan Alliance.

Iran’s foreign minister making an historic trip to Iraq, left Baghdad for two other power bases in the country. He met with Kurdistan Regional Government leaders, and during a press conference KRG President Massoud Barzani said “This visit is an encouraging sign for strengthening the relationship between our Region and Iran.”

Voices of Iraq reports Foreign Minister Manuchehr Mottaki then went to Basra, prior to heading back to Iran. He met with the current provincial leadership, which is set to turn over after election results are finalized.

Signing Video: Construction to begin on Iraqi funded pier and seawall. The Iraqi Navy has given the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Gulf Region Division approval to initiate construction of the $53 million Umm Qasr pier and seawall project in al-Basra province.

–

Mitsubishi added to Shell-Iraq gas deal

Published
by
Iraq Oil Report
on February 12, 2009
in Economy, Headline and Video
. 0 Comments

Plus:
*Iraq sweetens deal to oil majors in Istanbul meetings
*South Oil Co. offers oil companies 40 wells to drill
*Walid Khadduri on oil and elections
*Iran-Iraq meetings pledge oil, other economic trade boost
*KRG changes legislative body name, says Qandil Mountains contained
*Baghdad museum to reopen
*Fallujah still in ruins
*Joost Hiltermann: lessons of a peaceful election

A natural gas deal in the works between Shell and the state-run South Gas Co. will now include Mitsubishi and the Oil Ministry is urging the deal be finalized soon.

Oil Minister Hussain al-Shahristani meet with Shell and SGC representatives Wednesday, and will hold talks with Mitsubishi in two weeks, Ahmed Rasheed reports for Reuters.

An initial agreement between the companies – called a Heads of Agreement, or HoA – signed mid-September, left many questions to be answered about the deal, which representatives of the government and the company said would be limited to capturing and utilizing the gas being flared currently in Basra.

Then controversy swarmed after it was revealed by United Press International’s Ben Lando the HoA could lead to Shell getting access and sole rights to a virtual monopoly of the country’s gas sector for 25 years.

The HoA itself was first made public right here by Iraq Oil Report.

Soon after, UPI’s Ben Lando and Alaa Majeed reported Shell and Iraqi officials claiming the future contract would establish a partnership joint venture and not a monopoly.

While only some of the HoA is binding on Iraq, the details in the final agreement, yet to be signed or disclosed, will be based on the HoA.

Iraq’s Oil Ministry began Thursday its three day meeting with oil and gas companies in Istanbul, firms who may bid to develop a half dozen oil and gas fields.

Simon Webb for Reuters reports the Oil Ministry has sweetened the terms for winning deals.

The discussions take place amid lower oil prices – putting pressure on the Ministry to increase oil production and decreasing oil company cash – but also in a grey area of the “new” Iraq where the extent of foreign investment allowed in Iraq’s oil is not settled.

The fields on offer for the first and second round of bidding, to be awarded by mid- and end-year, respectively, would be developed in a joint service venture, keeping control of the oil and gas in Iraqi hands but giving a larger percentage of joint venture ownership to the contracting companies. The rate of return is still unclear.

While the oil fields on offer are currently producing fields in need of modern technology and equipment, the gas fields are largely untouched. World Gas Intelligence has details on the terms offered for gas development, which are more generous to foreign investors than oil contracts.

Iraq’s South Oil Co. is calling on bidders to drill on the Nahr Ben Umar and Majnoon fields. A total of 40 wells are to be drilled, with a goal of increasing combined production by 50,000 barrels per day, Hassan Hafidh reports for Dow Jones Newswires. Iraq has been troubled by decreasing production from the south, where most of the production is taking place. This has led to increased pressure – and possibly motive the tender – on the Oil Ministry. And it further raises questions over the fate of a the Iraq Drilling Co. and its planned joint ventures to increase capacity, announced in Baghdad last December. Iraq Oil Report has been told of delay in finalizing the deals, and the South Oil Co. looking outside the IDC is evidence that will continue at least short term.

Underinvestment, overuse, war, sanctions, looting and attacks have all targeted about 80 percent of Iraq’s pipeline network, causing “between 50 to 100 percent total destruction,” Iraq Pipeline Co. Director General Hashem Abid Al Ghafoor said, Tarek el-Tablawy reports for The Associated Press.

As oil is the main pillar of Iraqi economy, what happens in Iraq in general affects it directly, especially as the country holds promising potentials in the field of oil (the second largest oil reserves in the world), veteran Iraq journalist Walid Khadduri writes in a post-election review for Dar al-Hayat. Oil will certainly play a fundamental role if the political situation were to stabilize, and havoc and corruption to be reined in.

A joint Iraq-Iran trade meeting in Baghdad called for $5 billion in new trade, including in the oil and electricity sectors, and agreed on follow-up committees, UPI reports. “There is a need for more cooperation in the oil sector. We are expecting a delegation’s visit concerning the oil sector,” said Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki, who led his country’s delegation, reports the Badr newspaper, which is operated by the Iran-linked political party Islamic Supreme Council in Iraq. “Additionally, more cooperation is needed in monitoring earthquakes at the border areas, to make use of (Iran’s) Abadan refinery. And to make use of areas that are full of propane.”

Mottaki used his Iraq visit to spurn U.S. overtures on talks over security in Iraq. Although at least 18 people died Wednesday in a series of bombings, Mottaki said security has improved enough to rule the talks moot, Steven Lee Myers reports for The New York Times.

Iraqi Kurdistan’s top envoy to the United States says the KRG has instituted a security perimeter around the Qandil Mountains where separatist Kurdish militias are alleged to stage attacks across the northern Iraq border into Turkey, UPI reports.

Two top U.S. Senators are asking the U.S. Army for answers on an alleged mishap by contractor KBR, allowing soldiers to inhale dangerous chemicals at the Qarmat Ali water treatment plant in Basra. Rick Callahan reports for The Associated Press Sens. Byron Dorgan and Evan Bayh are questioning why six years after the fact the Army still refuses to adequately explain the incident.

Their letter said KBR’s Army contract for the Qarmat Ali plant appears to have included a risk assessment of the site, but that the company failed to detect “what we all now know to be significant quantities” of the chemical.

Bayh and Dorgan said Indiana National Guard troops based at the water plant soon after the March 2003 American invasion didn’t learn of their possible exposure until September 2003, and only after they saw KBR workers wearing special protective clothing.

The senators also want the Army to update them on its efforts to alert soldiers with Guard units from Oregon, South Carolina and West Virginia that they may also have been exposed.

Iraq’s Kurdistan Regional Government has changed the name of its legislative body from the Kurdistan National Assembly to Iraq’s Kurdistan Parliament, UPI reports.

Iraq will reopen later this month its renowned national museum, home to priceless artifacts plundered in the unchecked chaos following the 2003 U.S.-led invasion, Khalid al-Ansary reports for Reuters.

The New Fallujah Up Close and Still in Ruins: Dahr Jamail reports in TomDispatch.com everything in Fallujah, and everyone there, has been touched to the core by the experience, but not everyone is experiencing the aftermath of the city’s devastation in the same way. In fact, for much of my “tour” of Fallajah, I was inside a heavily armored, custom-built, $420,000 BMW with all the accessories needed in twenty-first century Iraq, including a liquor compartment and bulletproof windows. One of the last times I had been driven through Fallujah — in April 2004 — I was with a small group of journalists and activists. We had made our way into the city, then under siege, on a rickety bus carrying humanitarian aid supplies. After watching in horror as U.S. F-16’s dropped bombs inside Fallujah while we wound our way toward it through rural farmlands, we arrived to find its streets completely empty, save for mujahideen checkpoints.

Former Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi traveled to Najaf to visit with the revered Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani to discuss reconstruction progress in Iraq, UPI reports. Allawi emerged from the meeting saying he supported the cleric’s position that national security and reconstruction issues were at the top of the national agenda.

The lessons of a peaceful Iraqi election are more complex than early readings suggest. The reverberations will be felt in Kurdish and Shi’a politics in particular, says deputy middle-east program director of the International Crisis Group Joost R Hiltermann writes in Open Democracy.

A Change in National Mood: Ahmad al-Sa’dawi reports for Niqash on January 31st, 47-year old Abu Amir left his house in Saba’ Qosour, a poor neighborhood in north-east Baghdad, to cast his vote for the Madaniyoun (civilians) coalition, dominated by the Iraqi Communist Party. Abu Amir was optimistic that the coalition could win a large number of votes in Baghdad’s provincial elections.

–

Iraqi oil ministry to face tough crowd, critics in upcoming meetings

Published
by
Iraq Oil Report
on February 10, 2009
in Economy, Headline and Video
. 2 Comments

Plus:
*Shahristani wants expanded ministry role, new national oil co., less red tape
*Petrochemical worker repression outrage by int’l union
*Iraqi in Gitmo prison now missing
*Sarkozy in Baghdad visit wants French firms back in country
*Maliki responds to Biden threats to sovereignty
*Video: Building boom in northern Iraq
*Shoe-throwing Zaidi gets Feb. 19 trial date
*New Carnegie report on peace in Kurdistan
*Much more

Iraq’s Oil Ministry meets with disgruntled international oil executives this week in Istanbul, but must defend its policies in upcoming oil conference scheduled for Baghdad this month and next and in Erbil in April, as well as face workers following a key union meeting, Ben Lando reports for United Press International:

Since the U.S.-led invasion toppled the strong-arm Saddam Hussein’s government, Iraq’s appointed and elected officials have clearly outlined the end goal — increasing oil and gas production in the next 10 to 15 years to a level whereby all domestic needs for fuel and electricity are met and excess can be exported.

The means to this end are still undecided. The role of foreign and private oil companies has not been decided. Neither has the extent, if any, to which oil policy and development will be decentralized and controlled locally. …

Pre-qualified oil companies will be able to bid on developing oil and gas fields selected by the Oil Ministry as part of a series of tenders. The terms of the contracts are not clear, and interested oil companies — including the largest in the world — have expressed concern. The ministry’s meeting in Istanbul is aimed at clarifying the process. Eight oil and gas fields are to be awarded by June and another 11 fields by the end of this year. …

Maliki has called on Iraqi and non-Iraqi oil experts in and out of the country to meet in Baghdad a week after the Istanbul meeting with oil companies. A source tells United Press International few Iraqi expats will attend. The meeting has been heralded by Deputy Prime Minister Barham Saleh, one of the national leaders of Iraqi Kurds, who is Oil Minister Hussain al-Shahristani’s most vocal critic.

Likely the main topic at the meeting is a report by Saleh and his ad hoc committee to examine oil production problems in southern Iraqi oil fields. …

There are also plans for conferences — one organized by the office of President Jalal Talabani (a major Kurdish politician), the other by the Ministry of Planning on non-oil economic development — which could turn into additional space for critics of the Oil Ministry policy as either too reliant on international oil companies or too centralized.

In mid-March, a historic meeting of Iraqi workers is scheduled in Erbil, Iraq. Banned by Saddam Hussein, trade unions representing workers in the oil, electricity, construction, port and teaching trades have organized to demand back and increased pay, fight privatization and foreign workers, and defend other workers’ rights. The most vocal and organized of the newly formed unions are the oil workers, who have kept foreign firms from operating refineries and threatened to stop production if international oil companies are given too great an access to oil and gas reserves — a thorn in the sides of both Shahristani and Iraqi Kurds.

Attendees of the International Labor Conference in Iraq will include members of U.S. Labor Against the War, a coalition of American unions, and Iraq Veterans Against the War, a growing group of American military members turned war opponents and the only non-union representation. This meeting will likely rejuvenate the unions of Iraq.

Meanwhile, the United Nations’ Iraq mission and Office for Project Services and the European Union are planning with the government of Iraq and the Kurdistan Regional Government of Iraq an April “roundtable on federalism and hydrocarbon management,” according to a source who asked not to be identified. The conference is still in the planning process, UPI is told. “The Iraq Oil Law is not the primary subject of the roundtable.”

Read the entire article: Click Here.

Faleh al-Khayat writes for Platts of the Saleh report’s plans:

The target of the accelerated plan is to add 380,000-400,000 b/d of crude oil production capacity in the period 2009-2010 by using available surface facilities and drilling 100-110 new oil wells with the work to be done mainly by the Iraqi Drilling Company (IDC), which is committed to drilling 97 of the wells. The estimated cost of the plan was put at $200 million.

Shahristani told reporters Saturday he wants expanded rights to sign deals without extra government involvement. Ahmed Rasheed reports for Reuters:

Shahristani said he hoped to speed up reconstruction of Iraq’s oil sector by forming a national oil company, which would be able to make deals without waiting for the cabinet approval required in the country’s cumbersome political process.

He said red tape had held up the import of oil equipment which was stuck in port, and the slow budget process had delayed much-needed investment.

“I find it strange that explosives and drugs are moving through the borders, but when it comes to equipment of the Iraqi oil ministry we face obstructions,” he said. “We have dilapidated oil pipelines, which affects crude production. So far we have not been able to buy a new pipeline because we don’t have enough money and the 2009 budget is not yet approved.”

An international union is condemning a Basra petrochemical company for allegedly using security forces to break up a rally by workers demanding back pay. The International Federation of Chemical, Energy, Mine and General Workers’ Unions in a press release said the actions were similar to the Saddam era and “condemns the Iraqi state company’s interference of workers’ right to assemble, and subsequent infringement and suppression of other rights.”

Iraq will arrest any non-Iraqi in country without a visa issued from the Interior Ministry, Agence France-Presse reports. The announcement comes after an Italian tourist was detained in Falluja by Iraqi security worried and wondered by a seemingly insane holiday. Stephen Farrell and Alissa J. Rubin reported the story for The New York Times after 33-year-old Luca Marchio decided to sight-see in Baghdad, Falluja and elsewhere, he opted to cut costs by taking public transportation and foregoing the security and translator nearly every non-Iraqi needs.

Marchio entered Iraq via the Turkish border with the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, which issues 10-day local visas, and took a taxi from Erbil to Baghdad. While the Interior Ministry is reiterating its sole authority to issue visas, the head of the KRG’s foreign relations department said all KRG issued visa’s are done with the consent of Baghdad.

The family of an Iraqi held in the U.S. Guantanamo Bay prison camp say neither the U.S. or Iraqi governments will tell them where Hassan Abdul Hadi is located, Aref Mohammed reports for Reuters. U.S. officials say Hadi was among four Iraqis transferred to Iraq Ministry of Justice authority on January 17. But Iraq’s justice, interior or defense ministries don’t know where he is located.

The top U.S. weapons of mass destruction inspector in Iraq in the 1990s and post-Saddam-era says Iraqi officials attempted to negotiate out of the expected U.S.-led invasion but the Bush administration was bent on war. Jeff Stein reports for CQ Homeland Security that Charlie Duelfer, author of the new book “Hide and Seek: The Search for Truth in Iraq,” writes that the nuclear weapons project was ended and destroyed in the early 1990s, then-Russian President Vladimir Putin pressed Saddam Hussein himself to resign to avoid an invasion, former Ambassador to the U.S. Nizar Hamdoon provided critical and accurate information, and the Bush administration ignored successful, covert overtures to leaders in the ministries of oil, finance, trade and intelligence.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy, in a surprise visit to Baghdad, called for a return of French companies to business in Iraq. Waleed Ibrahim reports for Reuters French firms wouldn’t be banned because the country didn’t support the 2003 invasion, Maliki said: “They will not be starting from scratch, because French firms have a long history in Iraq.”

In a press conference with Sarkozy, Maliki responded to Vice President Joe Biden’s weekend statements that the United States needs to press Iraqi leaders to reconciliation, Marc Santora and Alan Cowell report for The New York Times: “The time for putting pressure on Iraq is over. … The Iraqi government knows what its responsibilities are. We are carrying out reform and we are in the last step of reconciliation.”

While Middle East construction capital Dubai stalls its cranes, Iraq’s Kurdish North is thriving like never before with plans to revamp the entire city of Erbil.

The Promise in Iraq’s Rebirth, an op-ed in The Washington Post by Iraqi Ambassador to Iraq Samir Sumaida’ie.

Muntathar al-Zaidi, the Iraqi reporter turned infamous shoe-thrower, will have an open trial beginning Feb. 19, Iraqi officials said, Trenton Daniel and Hussein Kadhim report for McClatchy Newspapers.

Preventing Conflict Over Kurdistan: a new report by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace outlines policy recommendations for the United States:

• Break the deadlock between the Iraqi government and the KRG over oil and gas revenue sharing and refugee resettlement. This will go a long way toward rebuilding trust and preventing Kirkuk from becoming a flashpoint—the first priority for the United States.
• Continue to support the federal system outlined in Iraq’s constitution and avoid any suggestion that Iraq be partitioned.
• Solidify the dialogue between Turkey and the KRG through U.S. involvement. Warming relations between Turkey and the KRG would stabilize the region and aid in a smooth U.S. troop withdrawal.
• Demobilize the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and encourage its fighters to disarm or defect under a joint political and military effort coordinated by the KRG, Turkey, and the United States.
• Work with European allies to resolve Turkey’s internal Kurdish disputes. Supporting Turkey’s counterterrorism program and its bid for EU accession, and providing development assistance in Turkey’s Kurdish regions would allow the U.S. and Europe to address problems from both sides.

–