Thread: Archive News - Iraqi Dinar Think Tank - 28/03/10 - 21/06/10

Parliament : Maliki is still the favorite to take over as Prime Minister

According to a member of the National Alliance coalition, the rule of law by Adel Fahd that the criteria set to choose a candidate as prime minister of the coalition and is not subject to the reservation or acceptance in some quarters.

Fahd said in a statement carried by news agency reported that the reluctance of some figures on the coalition leader Nuri al- Maliki, the rule of law will not affect his candidacy for prime minister because that will determine this matter is Maiiralganp leadership of the National Alliance and not the views of some of those who reject it.

He pointed out that Fahd al-Maliki is still the Aloovrahza to take the job in order to merit the electoral higher.

http://radionawa.com/ar/NewsDetailN....775&LinkID=151

Foreign trade officials the view that the major investment opportunities in Iraq

Foreign trade officials were unanimous on the existence of investment opportunities in Iraq in several areas, and in spite of the challenges posed by the security reality in the country.

On the sidelines of an exhibition Kthelokat foreign companies, primarily in Baghdad on Sunday , called Consul Commercial at the American Embassy in Baghdad, Brian McCleary, in a radio interview investment companies, U.S. to provide services in Iraq, despite the challenges they may face on the security front, pointing out that the sectors of oil, electricity, construction and communications Main areas of investment in the country.

For his part, said Industrial Advisor in the Office of Reconstruction Team Baghdad, American Kevin Hughes that the advancement of the Iraqi infrastructure , including the reform of electric power and Tuvreura permanently.

The Director of the branch companies and public relations at the Bank of Dar Es Salaam Investment Ammar Hatem blamed the Iraqi government not to accommodate foreign investors and engaged in major projects , pointing out that the Local investment firms have contracted with the Government to implement small projects , but that the issue of power , for example, need The efforts and potential.

Participated in the exhibition, more than 120 companies , mostly American and British , which was introduced by the models of the files , brochures and illustrations of the services that seek to make in the economic aspect of Iraqi investors can access them.

http://radionawa.com/Ar/NewsDetailN....721&LinkID=155

Finance Minister stresses need to upgrade the industrial reality in Iraq

Finance Minister Baqir al-Zubaidi need to upgrade the industrial sector in Iraq through the preparation of strategic studies for the industrial sector and support the capability to allow him the promotion of industry in Iraq.

A statement from the Ministry of Finance said Zubaidi said during a meeting with a delegation from the Iraqi Federation of Industries to the importance of the Iraqi industry capable of meeting the policy of dumping in the Iraqi market and go for plants able to take advantage of raw materials Iraqi contribute to the development of industry and establish clear lines of the industrial sector of Iraq During the umbrella Iraqi Federation of Industries.

He called the bank to support the industrial manufacturers through the provision of loans and support the private sector to contribute to the process of building the Iraqi economy

http://radionawa.com/Ar/NewsDetailN....746&LinkID=155

Zebari warns of Iraqi anger if it continues, "rhetoric" about the Prime Minister

warned Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari that prolong the "rhetoric" about who should be prime minister, would raise the anger of public opinion as it involves the risk of fueling the riots.

Was quoted by Agence France Presse today, Zebari said : "This launch is a noisy demonstrations in protest against power cuts could be a harbinger of more trouble."

Zebari said that "failure to form a government and not to arrive at solutions so far, and the continuation of the exercises and competition for positions may require the intervention of the United Nations to assist in reaching an agreement to end the crisis."

"What we saw in Basra Saturday was a warning, and anger shown by the demonstrators was unusual."

The province of Basra has seen demonstrations Saturday due to poor electricity services, led to the violence that left two dead and three wounded, while 17 fell wounded during a demonstration in the city of Nasiriyah lasted for two consecutive days in protest against the acute shortage of electricity.

http://iraq-beituna.net//show.php?sho=18565

Oil Firms ‘plough ahead’ and Ignore Politics to Invest in Iraq’s South

Rumaila, the workhorse of Iraq’s oil industry and its largest producing oilfield, is buzzing with activity as executives, engineers and drillers begin a massive overhaul to nearly triple its million barrels per day output.At the airport in Basra, capital of southern Iraq, officials struggle to process the unprecedented numbers arriving to join the country’s nascent oil boom. Iraq may be struggling to form a new government almost three months after elections, but oil firms chosen to carry out the largest oilfield development projects on the planet are ploughing ahead with investments that could take the country into the elite of global oil producers. And, though the old administration failed to pass a new law to govern an energy sector vital to rebuilding the country after years of war and sanctions, Iraq’s oil industry is booming. “The companies are not going to sit back and just wait,” said Raad Alkadiri of Washington-based PFC Energy. “Iraq’s government has itself encouraged this by saying ‘keep going and the politics will sort itself out” The Rumaila project is the most advanced and was the first Baghdad signed, with BP and China’s CNPC taking it on. Oil Service Company Weatherford International is already up and running on the ground there. It was one of the firms that won part of a $500 million deal to drill wells at the field and already has 300 people working in Iraq. “It’s still very early days,” said Alex Munton of Edinburgh-based consultancy Wood Mackenzie. “But the drilling contract’s in place and the pace of activity so far is an indicator of them hitting the ground running, as they said they would do.” Iraq sits on the world’s third-largest oil reserves and has signed contracts that would boost its output by around 10 million barrels per day by 2017, generating an additional $700 million a day in oil revenues at current prices. Though it may never reach that target and output gains over the next year or so are expected to be much more modest at around 600,000 bpd, the contracts themselves have encouraged companies to move ahead as quickly as possible. To start recuperating investment, oil companies need to boost output at producing fields by 10 percent. From Iraq’s untapped fields, firms have an early target called first commercial output to trigger cost recovery. Hitting the targets fast reduces capital investment exposure to Iraq by allowing oil firms to recycle money already invested. The faster oil firms hit the targets, the faster they can begin recycling investments, reducing the need for new exposure. “The reality is that the quicker you can get to commercial output on these contracts, the quicker you can recover investment and begin receiving remuneration,” Alkadiri said. While the outgoing government failed to pass a new oil law to provide a framework for investment, it said the deals were legal under existing legislation. So far, legal uncertainty has done little to discourage investment, said Hadeed Hassan, a Baghdad-based lawyer for Al-Tamimi & Co, who worked on the deals. “It’s not enough to stop them,” said Hassan. “They’re already signing subcontracts, they wouldn’t be signing such contracts if they weren’t ready to go ahead and move down south.”

In the political vacuum that has emerged from an inconclusive election, neither leading contender Iyad Allawi nor Prime Minister Nuri al-Mailiki has indicated he would embark on what would be a political nightmare for the oil companies – a full review and overhaul of the deals. Iraq’s take of revenues from the deals is among the highest in the world. It would be hard for the government to squeeze more out of the contracts, oil industry executives say. With so much at stake, a new administration would be reluctant to turn back the tide of activity the contracts has unleashed. Seven years after the US-led invasion, the country is still pumping below pre-war levels. “Iraq has no choice but to move ahead with these contracts,” said Luay al-Khatteeb, of the London-based Iraq Energy Institute. “Any government will honor them, not because they are perfect, but because they have no choice. They’ve already wasted too much time.” Iraq faces huge challenges building the capacity to deal with the size of the oil projects underway. Many of Iraq’s most skilled workers and bureaucrats left the country during the years of sectarian violence after the war. That has left its administration and its national oil company with little capacity to deal with the megaprojects at most of its largest oilfields. Already, oil firms were finding Iraq’s South Oil Company a frustrating partner, industry sources said.

“These are some of the biggest projects on the planet,” said one source familiar with operations in Basra. “And Iraq’s strategic planning capacity is showing the wear and tear of years of decline and brain drain.” Across the administration, efforts are underway to train bureaucrats to handle the surge of activity ahead. “There is an unprecedented level of activity right now in Basra,” said Andrew Doust, of Coffey International Development, which has been involved in training over 100,000 Iraqi public sector workers since the war. “This will certainly place greater demands on Iraqi systems than they have ever had before.” At Basra airport, the old Iraq is already struggling to deal with the new. People arriving to join the nascent oil boom crowd around a counter for hours staffed by one official approving visas that have already been granted by Baghdad, a consultant who just visited the region said on condition of anonymity. “They can’t even staff and manage properly the one gateway to the country for a few hundred billion dollars,” he said.

William Wakeham, Managing Director of AAIB, the foreign insurance brokers based in Iraq observes that this news shows that international oil companies have taken strategic decisions to position themselves as future key partners in the emerging Iraq, sound in the knowledge that whatever shape the next Iraqi government takes, the economic underpinnings of the economy and the need to expand oil production will remain.

Iraq itself arguably lacks the technical resources and expertise to quickly refurbish existing capacity and to put in place new capacity, at the rate needed for the Governments recently published output targets to be met. Hence the reliance on outside expertise and the volume of contract awards over the last two years.

Whereas the political stalemate creates a degree of uncertainty as to the status of some oil contract awards and whether they will be honoured, renegotiated or cancelled, this risk seams to have been factored in by companies when bids were made and contracts were signed.

Oil and gas companies and their supporting infrastructure and service companies cannot avoid “political risk” totally when investing in Iraq or in other transition economies, however some risks can be mitigated by insurance programmes.

‘Political risk” insurance gives companies a degree of protection against certain politically based events or conditions that result in a financial loss. These may include politically motivated violence, such as revolution, insurrection, civil unrest, terrorism or war; Governmental expropriation or confiscation of asset, repudiation of contracts, or for example, inconvertibility of foreign currency or the inability to repatriate funds.

Clearly the continuing interest of foreign companies and their preparedness to commit sizable funds into Iraqi projects shows that these types of potential risks are not perceived to be probable enough, or their impact large enough, to halt future investments.

It’s expected that such risks will subside even further once the new political status quo emerges, the new government is formed and when government policies, including economic development policies are given a fresh impetus.

A Unified Gulf?

This is not a new issue, but rather a seasonal one that we can discuss from different angels, such as that of Arab or Gulf unity, among others. Anybody who discussed this matter and has examined its details must be aware that any attempt to unify any two countries in the world represents a shocking and difficult endeavor, and history testifies that this is something that can only be achieved through military action.

There are only six Arab Gulf countries in the Gulf Cooperation Council [GCC] and after thirty years they have failed to reach an agreement on consolidating the riyal, dinar, and dirham into a single currency, despite the ease of such an undertaking, and the similarity in the Arab Gulf economies. However despite the failure to institute a single currency, and other missteps, the GCC represents the most successful such institution in the region.

Dr. Abdullah al-Nafaisi shocked Gulf States by quoting a US study that said that only 2 Gulf countries will survive the next 15 years, Saudi Arabia and Oman. Nobody discussed this study, instead everybody focused upon its findings, and it is important that we be aware that such studies do not represent absolute facts. More importantly, political studies or analysis – regardless of who is writing this study or what institution is issuing it – remains nothing more than a study that must be open to discussion with an open mind. It is a huge mistake to try and transform politics into mathematics. In the West there are dozens of respectable institutions, and hundreds of competent Middle Eastern researchers, and they discuss and debate theories and conclusions put forward, therefore it would be a mistake to select one particular study and disregard all others.

Dozens of studies have been issued over the past 5 decades, all of which put forward a host of different predictions for the future of the Gulf region, many of which were proved to be completely wrong, from predictions of secession, to wars, to coups. For example an American scholar and researcher William Quandt published an entire book in the 1980s predicting the death of Saudi Arabia, while the RAND Corporation issued a study on the September 11 attacks that predicted a far more shocking fate for Saudi Arabia and Egypt than this. There are many similar examples, and each study represents one single analysis among a myriad of other analyses, some of which are contradictory.

More importantly, I think it wrong to intimidate Gulf States by saying "either you merge with Saudi Arabia or you will be devoured by Iran." Such a statement might prompt these countries to adopt a defensive or isolationist stance, instead of thinking about their future in an open-minded manner. We must not underestimate any Gulf State, no matter how small, for they are amongst the oldest countries in the world despite their recent political independence and the newness of their institutions. These are states that survived troubled and turbulent centuries which saw the rise and fall of mighty empires in our region. More importantly, diversity is not necessarily a disadvantage, especially if there is harmony and agreement amongst the different neighboring countries. In fact, this is something that would be an advantage and in everybody's best interests. If we look at Bahrain for example, we would see that while it is the smallest of the Gulf States, it is ruled by one of the most prestigious houses in the Arab region, more importantly Bahrain serves as a beacon of enlightenment and modernization for all Gulf States. If Bahrain was annexed to Saudi Arabia, it may not have been as successful in performing such a role due to the difference in nature between the two countries. Likewise, if the UAE merged with Oman, it may not have been able to pursue its modernizing and developmental path due to the difference in strategy and management between the two ruling regimes.

Al-Nafaisi is right to sound the alarm about the dangers facing the Gulf States; however we can face up to future threats in a manner that does not involve following the paths of annexations and unification, for closer cooperation among Gulf States will achieve greater results than unification. Many aspects of Gulf cooperation are failing today because the politicians are unable to appreciate the full magnitude of the positive impact this would have on their regimes and people. Needless to say, there are countries in the region and all around the world that are biding their time and waiting for an opportunity to pounce on these Gulf States. They view these states as being rich treasuries, and are waiting for the right moment to break in and rob them. After all, we live in a world that is full of villains and bandits.

http://www.gulfinthemedia.com/index....blpost=2010_06

Central Bank re-work

Central Bank began its work yesterday after the announcement does not damage any important documents.

Said Abdul Hussein al-Yasiri General Manager of Bank of Iraq: The Central Bank and Bank of Iraq on Sunday, starved of their work. Yasiri said in press statements that the damage was in the second and third floors did not result in any damage to the basic documents of the bank.

The seven suicide bombers blew up themselves in the thirteenth month in an attempt to storm the Central Bank, while security forces arrested several militants associated with the group that carried out the attack on the bank.

While the Baghdad Operations Command said that the results of the investigation in the attack on the central bank will announce in the coming days, the organization adopted the so-called «Islamic State of Iraq» terrorist operation.

http://translate.googleusercontent.c...pow-j1nJLEP1vw