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

Hashemi concludes visit to Kuwait

The Vice President Tariq Hashimi on the establishment of a joint technical committee between Iraq and Kuwait to review matters relating to debt and compensation resulting from the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990. Hashemi said that Kuwaiti leaders also appealed to reduce the percentage deducted from the proceeds of Iraqi oil, which amounts to 5%. Added that in the light of high oil prices, this figure is very significant, pointing out that the proceeds of the Iraqi government is not enough to agree on a LAN infrastructure projects needed by the country. Said Hashimi told reporters at the conclusion of his visit to Kuwait, which lasted three days that any compromise on the outstanding issues would be a very good result.

Iraqi Media Net

Update.......

Hurdles remain in Iraq's Akkas gas future

Legal and logistical questions remain for Iraq, despite talks with Shell and Total to develop the Akkas field, which may feed gas to both Syria and Europe.

The Akkas gas field in Anbar province contains up to 7 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, located in an area until recently most known for al-Qaida's presence. Iraq's total proven reserves are 112 trillion cubic feet.

Development talks are also possible because security has improved. Anbar province was a stronghold of the Sunni insurgency and linked to al-Qaida. But a refocused U.S. military effort to join forces with Iraqi Sunnis against al-Qaida has improved security.

The risk, however, remains. The Shiite-led government opposes arming the Sunnis and the Sunnis feel excluded from the government, setting the stage for a potentially new front of the civil conflict in the country.

The Times reports both Shell and Total are in the running for a deal, as are other companies the Iraqi government met with last week.

The government has yet to approve a new national hydrocarbons law governing investment and control over the sector. Oil Minister Hussain al-Shahristani has said he'll rely on the Saddam-era law to guide upcoming deal making until a new law is approved.

This brings into question whether Iraq will make a move away from a long-held nationalized energy sector and the extent international oil firms will be allowed in. It has been a major issue in the debate over the oil law.

Iraq may contract for services companies as a partner instead of bringing in a major oil company to do the work, The Times reports.

The country has huge gas deposits, a large need for the gas to feed its power sector, but is likely to opt for enhancing the federal income by exporting to Syria and Europe.

Syria will need to make good on commitments to step up security along the border and stem the flow of insurgents, as Iraq has asked them to do previously in talks to restart an oil pipeline.

The field's development is slated to begin sending 50 million cubic feet of natural gas per day to Syria, possibly increasing it to 450 million cubic feet daily and providing another source of gas for Europe, which is looking to diversify from current Russian reliance.

Hurdles remain in Iraq's Akkas gas future : World

US President George W Bush arrives in Kuwait

Kuwait City - US President George W Bush has landed in Kuwait Friday on the second leg of a nine-day Middle East tour which will also see him go to Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Egypt. Bush began his first regional tour with talks in Israel and the Palestinian areas.

The president was met at Kuwait City Airport by the country's ruler Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmad al-Sabah and ministers and senior officials and dignitaries.

US President George W Bush arrives in Kuwait : Middle East World

Good, not so bad news from Iraq Oil

Iraq ended a deadly year by steadily increasing oil production, but about $1.4 billion in revenue was taken by the still booming black market.

Around 21.5 million barrels of oil were reported pumped but not accounted for in exports, storage facilities or refineries, according to the global energy information firm Platts.

Smuggling has been a presence in Iraq for decades, including the green light by Saddam Hussein. Gangs, militias and insurgents have capitalized on both the crude and fuels black market with high oil prices, a regional need for refined products and subsidies for fuels.

In 2006, however, an estimate 44 million barrels were unaccounted for.

Iraqis faced the deadliest year of the occupation in 2007, though there was a slight drop in violence at the end of the year.

The oil sector also outperformed its recent past. Oil production had averaged just less than 2 million barrels per day since 2003, but Platts reports December 2007's daily average was 2.48 million barrels per day.

That's 73,000 more than November, raising the annual average to about 2.18 million bpd.

The uptick was mostly due to enhancements of security and repairs of the northern pipeline, which exports oil to Turkey.

It also feeds Iraq's largest oil refinery, in Baiji. "There are three sources that feed the terrorists and armed groups. The first source is the oil refineries in Baiji," said Rashid Flayih, Salah al-Din province's Samarra operations commander, the al-Adala newspaper reports.

Northern oil fields increased by 14,000 bpd in December from the month before.

The southern fields, which hold most of Iraq's oil, increased from 1.88 million to 1.93 million bpd over the same timeframe.

International Security - Energy - Briefing - UPI.com

PM receives joint INL-IAF delegation

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said on Friday during his meeting with a joint delegation of the Iraqi National List (INL) and the Iraqi Accordance Front (IAF) that his government do its utmost to render the ongoing political process a success.

"Al-Maliki said that the Iraqi government leave no stone unturned to render the political process a success within the recently stable security condition in the country as well as other plans to rebuild and develop the country in the coming stage," al-Maliki's office said in a statement received by the independent news agency Voices of Iraq (VOI).

"We want to build a state on justice and equality bases. This needs joint efforts by all political blocs," said the premier.

The statement quoted the delegation's members as saying that "the visit aims at reassuring the premiers' health as well as asserting their support to the government's national projects."

For his part, MP from the Iraqi National List Usama al-Nugefi told the VOI by the phone "the visit came by courtesy and to assure on al-Maliki's health."

The prime minister last Saturday returned home from London, where he underwent routine medical examinations.

"The visit aims also to highlight our supportive positions on some stances adopted by the government, such as, its rejection to the oil contracts signed by the Kurdish government with some foreign companies and its stance regarding article 140," the MP noted.

He described these positions as "national" and need to be supported to maintain Iraq's unity.

The Iraqi government criticized the contracts the Kurdish government signed with a number of foreign companies for oil drilling in Arbil, Sulaimaniya and Duhuk describing them as "illegal".

Kurdistan region government signed 15 production sharing contracts with 20 foreign companies despite that Baghdad government opposed these contracts before the parliament would have been passed the oil draft into law.

The government also backed the postponement of applying article 140 of the Iraqi constitution.

Article 140 of the Iraqi constitution is related to the normalization of the situation in Kirkuk , an important and mixed city of Kurds, Turkmen, Christians and Arabs. Kurds seek to include the city in the autonomous Iraq's Kurdistan region, while Sunni Arabs, Turkmen and Shiite Arabs oppose the incorporation. The article currently stipulates that all Arabs in Kirkuk be returned to their original locations in southern and central Iraqi areas, and formerly displaced residents returned to Kirkuk, 250 km northeast of Baghdad.

He denied that the meeting discussed the return of the two blocs' ministers to al-Maliki's government.

The INL and IAF withdrew from the government last summer.

Aswat Aliraq

Analysis: Turkey pits U.S. against Kurds

Turkey's president made it clear during his visit to Washington this week that his country will continue a hard-line approach in dealing with the Kurdish guerrilla campaign in his country and ensuring Kirkuk, Iraq's oil-rich northern city, doesn't fall under control of Iraq's Kurds.

After meetings with top officials, including President Bush, President Abdullah Gul exposed the fault line between U.S.-Turkey and U.S.-Kurd relations.

"Turkey and United States are partners in Iraq," he said Tuesday during a speech at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. "Needless to say, we both have great stake in Iraq's security and stability and welfare."

Turkey says the Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK, based in the hard-to-reach northern Iraq mountains, crosses the border north to carry out its violent strategy of Turkish Kurd autonomy. Turkey said U.S., Iraqi and Iraqi Kurdish leaders have not done enough to prevent attacks.

The future of Kirkuk, 180 miles north of Baghdad, is a struggle two decades in the making. Gul called it "a powder keg" that could enflame the region if the "international community fails."

After raising the issue with Bush, Gul met with U.N. Security-General Ban Ki-moon and pressed for the United Nations to take an active role in solving the Kirkuk issue.

Bulent Aliriza, director of the Center for Strategic & International Studies' Turkey Project, said Turkey basically holds a three-point position on keeping Kirkuk from the KRG: "the city and the oil resources around it belong equally to Turkomen, Arabs and Kurds who live there; its incorporation by the Kurds would provide the economic underpinning of an independent Kurdish state, which Turkey opposes; and it's contrary to the vital interest of the Turkomen who are ethnically related to the Turks."

Kirkuk is the capital of Iraq's northern oil sector, with adjacent oil fields holding up to an estimated 15 billion of Iraq's 115 billion barrels of proven oil reserves and the start of a pipeline feeding Iraq's largest oil refinery as well as sending oil exports to market when it juts north into Turkey.

Kurds, Turkomen, Arabs and others composed its population in the 1980s when Saddam Hussein forcibly moved Arabs in and others out and redrew the provincial boundaries to put the oil-rich lands out of majority Kurdish provinces.

Iraq's Kurdish leadership ensured the 2005 Constitution contained language, however vague, to reverse Hussein's brutal move. Kurds, Turkomen and others were to be resettled back in Kirkuk (and other disputed territories touched by the late dictator). Arabs brought in were to be brought out.

Then a census was to be taken to determine eligible voters in "a referendum in Kirkuk and other disputed territories to determine the will of their citizens," according to a translation of the Constitution posted on the U.S. Commerce Department's Iraq Investment and Reconstruction Task Force Web site, "by a date not to exceed the 31st of December 2007."

A week before that deadline, the top U.N. envoy to Iraq, Staffan de Mistura, and U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice met in Kirkuk to negotiate a six-month timeline to work out a solution. Iraq's Kurds, intent and passionate about a referendum where residents could choose to join the disputed territories -- and its oil -- to the semiautonomous Kurdistan Regional Government, reluctantly agreed. They've been vocal in their critique of the national government for not putting enough effort into complying with the constitution's Kirkuk agenda and are ardently opposed to anything but the referendum in six months at the latest.

"As the primary Turkish goal is to prevent the incorporation of the city into the territory controlled by the Iraqi Kurds, they are happy with the postponement of the referendum and would not mind an indefinite postponement" Aliriza said. "It's as simple as that."

However, he said they were now pressing for a U.N.-negotiated "special status" for Kirkuk, like a region unto itself.

"The U.S. government is taking the Turkish position seriously," Aliriza said, "and this was a major factor in the U.S. decision to punt by getting a six-month delay."

"Clearly the U.S. has taken some hits from the Iraqi Kurds on the bombing of PKK targets," Aliriza said when asked what the U.S.-Turkish warming means for U.S.-Kurd relations.

"Whether the relationship suffers further we'll see," he said, adding the United States will be forced to take sides if Turkey escalates its effort to "finish the PKK" at the end of the six months.

Top Kurdish leader and KRG President Massoud Barzani canceled a meeting with Rice during her brief Kirkuk visit. Turkey had just bombed and invaded northern Iraq using U.S. intelligence, promised by Bush in November when Turkish Prime Minister Recep Erdogan was visiting.

The PKK, considered a terrorist organization by the United States, NATO, the EU and others, formed in the 1970s for the cause of Kurdish nationalism. Subsequent fighting and attacks are blamed on deaths in the upper 30,000s, both Turkish troops and civilians. Iraq's government, while calling the PKK terrorists, has also called on Turkey to work on improving the human rights of Kurds in Turkey. Iraq's Kurds have also said there is no proof attacks in Turkey were planned in or carried out by anyone based in Iraq.

A senior administration official said Bush and Erdogan didn't get specific in Kirkuk talks. For the PKK, Bush said support would continue, though he urged Ankara to talk with Iraq and Iraqi Kurds.

"We have (U.S.) cooperation," Gul said, "at the moment."

International Security - Energy - Analysis - UPI.com

Turkey to help U.S. operate, transport Iraqi oil

Turkey will help the United States to operate and transport neighbouring Iraq's oil as part of its drive to become an energy hub, Turkish Energy Minister Hilmi Guler told CNN Turk on Friday.

Guler visited the United States this week with President Abdullah Gul for talks with U.S. officials dominated by energy.

'We have reached an agreement with the United States on the issue,' Guler said. He gave no more details.

Guler also said Iraq's natural gas could be transported to European markets via Turkey.

Iraq pumps crude oil exports via a pipeline to Turkey's Mediterranean coast.

Ankara's ties with Iraq have been strained in recent months by Turkey's aerial bombardment of separatist Kurdish PKK militants who have been using mainly Kurdish northern Iraq as a base from which to attack Turkey.

SignOnSanDiego.com > In Iraq -- Turkey to help U.S. operate, transport Iraqi oil

Turkish president backs Iraqi Oil Law

Turkey's president says Turkish companies are ready to enter Iraq's oil sector when a new oil law is passed, dodging a question on Iraqi Kurds' oil deals.

"The Turkish petroleum company has various facilities and possibilities that could be put to use literally overnight" to help explore oil and gas, Abdullah Gul said this week during a U.S. visit.

In a question-and-answer session following a speech at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Gul was asked if Turkey will allow oil produced in Iraq's Kurdistan region to be exported to and through his country.

The Kurdistan Regional Government has begun developing the oil sector of its northern Iraq area unilaterally, claiming the central government is moving too slow and blocking a new oil law. Baghdad says the KRG deals are illegal.

Turkey, wary of a powerful Kurdish region, has said in the past that no oil produced from the KRG deals will be allowed into Turkey. A northern Iraq pipeline currently sends crude to the Turkish port of Ceyhan, but nothing produced from the KRG deals has made it to that market.

Gul's answer evaded the specific question, though he reiterated his support for Baghdad.

"On the one hand the rehabilitation of the current resources as well as the current facilities is important while it is also a very important priority for Iraq to have new wells for oil and gas to bring out new sources," he said. "We also know that at the center of the conflict's discussions in Iraq lie oil and gas."

"Our recommendation to the Iraqis," he added, "is the passing of this law as soon as possible and when that is done, work I'm sure will be carried out not just of the existing resources but also for new oil and gas resources, and at that stage, Turkey, with all of the possibilities that she has, will do whatever she can to ensure that she's there to help not just in the north but also in the south and all across the country."

Iraq has 115 billion barrels of proven reserves -- the third largest in the world -- located mostly in Iraq's south. The country is both vastly underexplored, with experts predicting perhaps twice as much to be found, and in need of rehabilitation of the current infrastructure.

The debate over the oil law includes how much control the central government should have over the oil sector strategy. The KRG favors a more decentralized policy.

There's also debate as to how much exploration -- searching for more oil -- should be conducted and how much effort should be put behind enhancing the currently producing and already discovered fields.

The KRG deals are all exploration.

International Security - Energy - Briefing - UPI.com

Sorry if already posted.....

Analysis: Deeper than an oil law in Iraq

Both Iraq’s federal government and the Kurdistan Regional Government are upset by each other’s efforts in reaching a deal on a national oil and gas law and have announced moves to develop the oil sector without it.

Neither has given up, however, on the hydrocarbons law, a tool that will both govern development of resources that bring in nearly all the government’s revenue and allow various factions to air their wants and find a compromise.

“If for any political reason the law is delayed, we’ll go ahead and start discussions with international oil companies,” Iraqi Oil Minister Hussain al-Shahristani said Saturday at an Iraq oil conference in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.

On Sunday, on the sidelines of the Iraq Petroleum 2007 summit, organized by The CWC Group, he said tenders for projects in Iraq’s vast oil and gas sector “will be announced in due time.” He didn’t say exactly which fields or exploration blocks, but they are included in the first phase of a five-year plan he outlined over the weekend, he said.

“The Ministry of Oil is entitled to sign any contract that is for the best benefit to the country,” he said. The government has been holding out for the federal law, but it appears pressure is wearing the patience thin.

The same goes for the KRG, which on Saturday announced it signed a production-sharing contract with an Iraqi-based subsidiary of Hunt Oil Co. of Dallas and Impulse Energy Corp.

“Any contract that has been signed by anybody other than the Ministry of Oil now before the new law is legislated has no standing as far as the government of Iraq is concerned,” Shahristani said Sunday of the deal. The KRG has signed a handful of oil and gas exploration and development deals with private firms, all of which have been condemned by Baghdad.

Shahristani said only the first four deals, struck prior to reaching agreement on a federal oil law, would carry any water with him. They would be reviewed by a federal oil and gas council established by the law to ensure they comply with it.

“We are not really looking for any blessing from others because we don’t need any of it,” KRG Natural Resources Minister Ashti Hawrami said in a telephone interview from Iraq. “Instead of undermining KRG’s achievements we would like to encourage others to work with us on the federal law to make some real progress in all the country.”

Without a new federal oil law, which has been in negotiations for more than a year, Iraq relies on legislation instated in the 1980s, which Shahristani says gives him the right to sign new deals. Hawrami said the 2005 constitution gives the Kurdistan region the right to pass its own oil law, which it did last month, and sign deals as well.

“Our recently enacted regional oil and gas law has nullified any other law before it. That is our constitutional right and we have done that,” he said, adding more deals are in the pipeline. “But, that only applies to the Kurdistan region, and the rest of Iraq is still governed by the old laws.”

The debate is more complex than merely negotiating laws and interpreting a constitution. There are layers of mistrust and fear fomented by decades of violent, strongman power wielded mostly along sectarian lines by Saddam Hussein. Such tension has been exacerbated by the past four plus years of an occupation that sought to use sectarian categories or roles to bring a slice of power to Iraq’s Shiite and Sunni Arabs and Kurds. But succeeding in being inclusive, the new form of government is also fractured along such identities.

The oil law, in turn, is not simply legislation governing the third-largest proven reserves of oil in the world. Oil sales funded more than 90 percent of government last year, so the oil is a base for power in Iraq. Agreeing on how to share and/or divvy that power (the extent of federalism in the new Iraq) and best develop the crude source of the power (the extent international investors can enter the longtime nationalized oil sector) is a litmus test.

The Bush administration and Congress included passage of an oil law as a benchmark for Iraq’s government (although the benchmark language referred to an oil law that decides how the oil revenue is to be shared, which will be decided in a separate revenue-sharing law). They said passing the law would lead to reconciliation.

As negotiations over the law turn tense, widening the gap between political players and creating the real or perceived need for unilateralism, it appears the law itself could be the proving ground for intra-Iraqi cooperation. It’s a decisive and divisive issue for Iraq, suffering from daily violence and a dwindling quality of life; it may not fit in an occupying power's cynical timeframe.

Indeed, backroom talks have seen successes. But soon after surfacing, deals break down or are found to be incomplete. In February an agreement was announced, but now neither the Kurds nor the central government can agree on changes each side wants or has made. Both still say they want to find a solution. That’s a feat considering the pressure being applied not only by the United States, other governments and institutions like the International Monetary Fund, but internally as well.

The Iraqi government is becoming weaker every day citizens experience long hours without electricity, long lines for fuel and hopes of restored healthcare, water, sewage and education systems. That, along with the violence, is spurring fighting between parties, even those allied by ethnicity or religion.

The oil unions in the south are so worried they’ll lose jobs and the country its natural resource that they vowed Sunday to strike if the law passes. They feel it gives too much to the international oil companies, which are putting pressure on the government as well. Thousands of top officials of the global oil industry attended two Iraq energy conferences in Dubai over the past eight days, urging attending Iraqi government officials to move faster.

“Iraqis have yet to agree on the shape of the country they live in. They need to agree on how to share resources and how to share power,” Yahia Said, director of Middle East and North Africa at the Revenue Watch Institute, said during the final panel discussion at Sunday’s summit. “It’s a matter that needs to be discussed and debated. … Iraqis need time and space to do that.”

International Security - Energy - Analysis - UPI.com

Don't know who Brian Williams is because I am not American (I'm guessing Reporter/Journalist) but thought I would post this anyway.

What Brian Williams doesn’t tell us…

None of this is on CNN, MSNBC, NBC or ABC. I wonder why?

Don’t you think that facts listed below would be important to a person deciding how they feel about the War and to what extent their feelings on the War determine how they vote?

1. Did you know that 47 countries have re-established their embassies in Iraq?

2. Did you know that the Iraqi government currently employs 1.2 million Iraqi people?

3. Did you know that 3100 schools have been renovated, 364 schools are under rehabilitation, 263 new schools are now under construction and 38 new schools have been completed in Iraq?

4. Did you know that Iraq ’s higher educational structure consists of 20 Universities, 46 Institutes or colleges and 4 research centers, all currently operating?

5. Did you know that 25 Iraq students departed for the United States in January 2005 for the re-established Fulbright program?

6. Did you know that the Iraqi Navy is operational?

7. They have 5 -100-foot patrol craft, 34 smaller vessels and a naval infantry regiment.

8. Did you know that Iraq ’s Air Force consists of three operational squadrons, which includes 9 reconnaissance and 3 US C-130 transport aircraft (under Iraqi operational control) which operate day and night, and will soon add 16 UH-1 helicopters and 4 Bell Jet Rangers?

9. Did you know that Iraq has a counter-terrorist unit and a Commando Battalion?

10. Did you know that the Iraqi Police Service has over 55,000 fully trained and equipped police officers?

11. Did you know that there are 5 Police Academies in Iraq that produce over 3500 new officers every 8 weeks?

12. Did you know there are more than 1100 building projects going on in Iraq?

13. They include 364 schools, 67 public clinics, 15 hospitals, 83 railroad stations, 22 oil facilities, 93 water facilities and 69 electrical facilities.

14. Did you know that 96% of Iraqi children under the age of 5 have received the first 2 series of polio vaccinations?

15. Did you know that 4.3 million Iraqi children were enrolled in primary school by mid-October?

16. Did you know that there are 1,192,000 cell phone subscribers in Iraq and phone use has gone up 158%?

17. Did you know that Iraq has an independent media that consists of 75 radio stations, 180 newspapers and 10 television stations?

18. Did you know that the Baghdad Stock Exchange opened in June of 2004?

19. Did you know that 2 candidates in the Iraqi presidential election had a televised debate recently?

Why didn’t Brian Williams tell us this, well, because he doesn’t want us to know - it hurts the political agenda of the liberal media for light to be shed on these facts, so they “cover” them up.

So much for unbiased and independent…

What Brian Williams doesn’t tell us… | CR Nation: News for College Republicans