Thread: Archive Latest News - Think Tank - 01/01/08 - 14/04/08

Iraq resumes pumping Kirkuk oil to Turkey

A source at the shipping industry said last Thursday that Iraq resumed pumping Kirkuk crude oil at the rate of about 72 thousand barrels a day through the northern pipeline to Turkey. The stocks of Iraqi crude in the Turkish port of Ceyhan on the Mediterranean hit six million barrels. However, the source did not specify when the pumping was resumed through the pipeline. The pumping of oil was stopped on Sunday because the storage tanks were full.

Iraq resumes pumping Kirkuk oil to Turkey

Govt. opposition secretly meet in Britain ahead of Iraq conference

Representatives of the Iraqi opposition have been secretly meeting in the British city of Leeds for two days in preparation for an upcoming conference on Iraq in the Egyptian capital Cairo, informed political sources said on Monday.

The majority of the participants at the meetings were Sunni Arabs from six opposition groups, including Sataam al-Kaoud, an owner of several successful companies in Jordan who is currently residing in Morocco, in addition to members from the Sunni Iraqi Accordance Front (IAF), the international al-Sharq al-Awsat newspaper said in its Monday issue quoting unidentified sources.

Three meetings have been held thus far in an attempt to adopt a unified stance and platform ahead of the Cairo-based conference on Iraq, the newspaper wrote quoting the same sources, providing no information about the scheduled date for the conference.

Claiming that the British government has played a prominent role in organizing the meetings, the sources said that Britain will keep itself involved in Iraqi affairs even after withdrawing its troops from the country.

Meanwhile, British Foreign Office Spokesman Barry Marston denied any knowledge of the meetings during a phone call with the newspaper.

In late December 2007, sources from the Iraqi parliament's Committee on Reconciliation and National Dialogue spoke of a conference on Iraq in the Egyptian capital, which they said is expected to tackle three main issues: federalism, power sharing and the presence of foreign forces in the country.

Aswat Aliraq

Major fire spreads at Iraq's biggest oil refinery

An explosion at a fuel storage tank caused a huge blaze at Iraq's largest refinery on Monday, injuring at least 36 workers, and the fire was spreading, witnesses said.

A Reuters cameraman at the Baiji refinery complex, some 180 km (110 miles) north of Baghdad, said he had seen at least one dead body and had counted at least 36 others suffering from burns.

"This is the biggest fire I have ever seen at Baiji refinery. We have not had a fire like this before," said an engineer, employed at the plant since 2003, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

He said the explosion had started in a liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) unit.
Dozens of firefighting trucks converged on the scene from neighboring towns.

The engineer said the fire was spreading after an initial explosion at a storage tank containing 5 million liters of fuel.

A second engineer said a technical fault had started the fire.

The refineries at Baiji in north-central Iraq have capacity of 310,000 barrels a day, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, and have been operating at less than full capacity due to power cuts and other problems including fires.

In January 2007, Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Barham Saleh said the country was losing $1.5 billion annually from attacks and theft at Baiji, which is vital to the nation's economy.

The internal pipeline taking crude oil from Iraq's northern Kirkuk oilfields to the refinery has also been prone to attacks by militants seeking to disrupt the flow of oil.

Major fire spreads at Iraq's biggest oil refinery - Yahoo! News

Update......

Firefighters bring Iraq oil refinery fire under control

Firefighters have succeeded in bringing a blaze at Iraq's largest oil refinery in Baiji under control, an engineer at the refinery said.

"There was no sabotage. It was caused by a technical fault," said the engineer, who declined to be named.

Firefighters bring Iraq oil refinery fire under control | Markets | Reuters&

Update.......

Iraq's Largest Oil Refinery Suspends Production After Fire

Iraq's largest oil refinery in the northern town of Beiji has been shut down after a fire broke out, an official said Monday.

"Causes of the explosion and the fire aren't known yet," Assem Jihad told Dow Jones Newswires by telephone from Baghdad. Jihad expected the fire to take some days before it could be put out.

Ten people suffered burns injuries, police and an engineer at the refinery said.

The fire broke out at about 1400 local time in a production unit that had recently undergone maintenance work, the engineer and the police officer said.

Jihad said the explosion has started in a liquefied petroleum gas unit.

Engineers said maintenance work had been carried out on units producing liquid gas and petrol, and the blaze was believed to have been caused by a technical problem as one unit began operating again.
Firefighters were on the scene, police said.

Iraq suffers from an acute shortage of oil products and it currently imports more than half of its fuel needs.

Beiji also serves as a key transfer point for crude oil being exported out of Iraq through the Turkish port of Ceyhan. Crude produced by northern oil fields is usually pumped to Beiji and the extra crude is pumped to Ceyhan for exports.

Beiji refinery has a capacity of 300,000 barrels a day, according to Iraqi oil officials, but has been operating at less than its half capacity due to acts of sabotage against pipelines feeding it with crude oil.

Nasdaq 100 Flash Quotes

JAPEX Helping Iraq Survey Key Oil Field In South Official

Oil and gas developer Japan Petroleum Exploration Co. Ltd. (JAPEX) is helping Iraq carry out seismic surveys a prized oil field in the south, a senior Iraqi oil official said Monday.

JAPEX is providing remote supervision to an Iraqi 3D seismic survey team to survey the Gharraf oil field in Nassiriya province, which has a preliminary estimated reserve of 1.1 billion barrels.

JAPEX has supplied the team with more than $10 million of equipment and has provided up-to-date training to its members in Japan and France, the official said. The Japanese company is providing these equipment and assistant to the Iraqi Oil Ministry free of charge, he said.

The team has already started seismic surveys in the field and is expected to finish work in four to five months, he said. The team will also survey other Iraqi oil fields, he said without naming them.

Gharraf, one of Iraq's untapped oil fields, is expected to produce up to 150, 000 barrels a day when it is developed, the official said. Iraq currently produces around 2.4 million barrels a day and plans to reach 3 million barrels a day by the end of 2008.

Nasdaq 100 Flash Quotes

2007 Great Year for Iraq’s Finances, Foreign Debt and Unemployment Down - Ministry of Finance

An official source in Iraq’s Ministry of Finance has said that the stability of the security conditions in the past few months has had dramatic impact on the economy, saying that 2007 was a solid year for economic developments, with Iraq’s foreign debts down by 80% and unemployment down to 16%.

Noozz.com | IRAQ

I will see if I can find out more on this later when more information comes out.

AP Interview: Iraq's Kurdish deputy premier warns of strife over Kirkuk

Iraq's Kurdish deputy prime minister warned Monday that failure to resolve the fate of the oil-rich city of Kirkuk could result in more strife and accused people within the government of blocking a solution.

''We have a choice,'' Barham Saleh told The Associated Press. ''We can either turn Kirkuk into an example of national Iraqi unity ... or turn it into a battlefield for strife between the components of Iraq.''

A referendum is expected later this year on whether Kirkuk will join the semiautonomous Kurdish zone to its north, or continue to be ruled by Baghdad.

Saleh said it was unacceptable to leave the dispute unresolved and accused unnamed people within the government of Shiite Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki of trying to stymie a solution spelled out in the 2005 constitution.

''I am a Kurd and see Kirkuk as part of the Kurdish region,'' Saleh said, explaining that because Arabs and Turkomen - the other two main ethnic groups inhabiting the city - see it differently, the issue must be resolved under current law.

Kirkuk's Arab and Turkomen residents dispute the Kurdish claim to the city, which has over the past 4 years seen hundreds of deadly attacks with sectarian or ethnic motives.

Leaders of Iraq's Shiite majority fear allowing Kirkuk to join the Kurdish region could undermine their new status as the country's dominant power, while the once-dominant Sunni Arab minority sees the loss of the city as a prelude to the breakup of the nation along sectarian or ethnic lines.

Saleh, like President Jalal Talabani, is widely viewed as a moderate Kurd and his assertion that Kirkuk is part of the Kurdish region reflects a universal conviction among Kurds. But his charge that government parties were working against a solution in Kirkuk reflects tension between the Kurds and their close Shiite allies.

The Kurds and Shiites, who combine for about 80 percent of Iraq's population, have been close allies since Saddam's ouster in 2003, but recent Kurdish assertions of independence, like the conclusion of oil exploration deals with foreign companies, without involving the central government, have led to harsh public exchanges.

The constitution, which most of Iraq's Sunni Arabs voted against in a 2005 referendum, provides for the ''normalization'' of Kirkuk - allowing Kurds forcibly moved from the city under Saddam Hussein's ''Arabization'' program to return and inviting Arabs lured there decades ago by financial reward to leave in return for compensation.

Santa Barbara News-Press

Iraq to ask UNSC to reduce compensations paid to Kuwait to one percent

Iraq will ask the UN Security Council (UNSC) to reduce from five to one percent the amount of compensatons paid by the Iraqi government, from oil revenues, to the State of Kuwait for damages caused by the 1990-91 Iraqi invasion of the North Gulf state.

Finance Minister Baqer Al-Zubaidi, addressing a special parliamentary session, said this issue was discussed by Iraqi and Kuwaiti officials.

"This issue was discussed with attendance of President of the Republic (of Iraq) Jalal Talabani with officials in Kuwait," he said.

"Iraq will submit a request to the Security Council to reduce the percentage to one instead of five of the value of sold oil," Zubaidi told the lawmakers.

He did not elaborate on the issue.

The UNSC informed the Iraqi government on December 14 last year the compensations' issue was under the jurisdiction of the Geneva-based UN Compensation Commission (UNCC).

كونا : Iraq to ask UNSC to reduce compensations paid to Kuwait to one percent - الشؤون السياسية - 07/01/2008

Kurdistan Region's achievements and crises in 2007

In this year (2007) the president of Israel suggested that the Iraqi Kurdistan would develop their federalism and declare independence. The political authority in Kurdistan rejected this suggestion with thanks.

The history of relationship between the Kurds of north Iraq and Israeli state goes back to the 1960s in the last century.

In the new history of Iraq in which the position of Kurdistan region is strengthened, increasingly reports are published which refer to the security, political and economic relations between the Kurds and Israel. Training Kurdish commandos and the activities of Israeli intelligence in north Iraq and strong commercial relations between the Israeli businessmen and the region, and more importantly the plan for the transport the oil of Kirkuk to the Israeli port of Haifa through Jordan are some issues that have been reported so far and have neither been confirmed [by relevant authorities] or denied.

Big Israeli businessmen are also active in the Kurdish regions of Turkey and Iran. Purchasing of land in these regions show the significance that Israel is giving to the region and also a reason for concern for those countries in which the Kurds represent a minority nation.

Iran relates the attraction of Israel to the region to some security and political motives. Political experts believe that the strengthening of the Israeli influence in the region through broadening the geographical base of that influence from Jordan to north Iraq allows Israel to have a control Iran’s ‘security belt’ and eliminate the strength points of the four countries of Iraq, Iran, Turkey and Syria by [gaining ability] to instigate the Kurds of Mahabad, Qamishlu, Diyarbekir and Kirkuk. These [Iranian experts] believe that this is a long-term Israeli strategy that it applies to put pressure on these countries.

But the participation of the Israeli intelligence aircraft in discovering the bases of Kurdistan Workers’ Party {PKK) in Qandil and its support to Turkey for the killing of the PKK guerrillas and the support of the US for these attacks, can be read as a change in the foreign policy of Tel Ebib and Washington in 2007. This is something that Kurdistan region must try to find out its reasons.

2007 was a very political year. In the past year Kurdistan region dealt with some sensitive changes: strengthening of a joint capital [for the region], acting for the formation of a united [Kurdistan regional] government, the opening of the UN office and a number of consulates in Arbil, acting towards the development of the investment sector and attracting foreign capital and working towards the institutionalization of government and removing the control of parties in it, are some of these important changes. At the same time at the level of Kurdistan region, the level of corruption in the region was rising, there was shortfall in the budget, and hastiness in trying to exploit the oil sector, the reappearance of the phenomenon of the migration of the young people, the reduction in services and increase in inflation.

At the level of Iraq, [the main events were]: trying to strengthen relationship with the Higher Islamic Council and Shia coalition, building relations with the Sunni Arab Sheikhs and the Islamic Iraqi Party, and continuous contact and communication with the Americans and the British for dealing with the crises of Kirkuk and oil and natural resources.

At the regional level, there were efforts to reconstruct the relations with Iran, Turkey and Egypt and plans for visiting Syria. At the same time the region faced up to the attacks by al-Qaida and Ansar al-Islam and organized the military force of “border guards”. The political parties in Kurdistan region were organized by a “higher committee of the political parties of Kurdistan region.” These can be considered as the most important achievements of the region last year.

What is important for 2008 is the necessity of putting a limit to bureaucracy and corruption in the region in 2008. Financial and administrative accountability must be strengthened by law. Before drawing up and deciding the budget of the region, the political parties must be distanced from the government and the higher commission of political parties must become more active. A proactive diplomatic agency must be established.

At the Iraqi level, Kurdistan region must keep a balance in its relations with the Sunnis and the Shias and must not forget that without the support of the Shia there would be no federalism and without the support of the Sunni’s Kirkuk cannot be returned to Kurdistan region.

At regional level, the national security of neighbours must be respected and economic relations with them need to be strengthened. Finally Kurdistan region must not ignore the US and Israel and investigate the reasons for the change of their position in relation to the region.

Kurdistan Region's achievements and crises in 2007 | Iraq Updates