Iraq Oil Report

Turkey’s invasion will likely be precise and direct in targeting the separatist Kurdistan Workers’ Party in northern Iraq, far enough from Iraq’s oil fields and pipelines.

But the fallout could go many directions – from very slight to erupting in the region and putting both Iraq’s and Turkey’s oil sector — vital to the world — at risk.

As Turkey’s military bares its teeth across the border with Iraq, oil prices sit comfortably above the $80-per-barrel mark. Any incursion will likely not affect the work of Iraq’s oil sector today but could stifle investment, especially in the KRG, and put Turkey’s oil sector — a vital transit route for the world’s oil supply — at risk.

“It looks like the institutional investors are looking for almost any event to emphasize with people who may not be as familiar with Middle East geography or politics as they ought to be to help push up the price of oil,” said Bulent Aliriza, an energy expert and director of the Center for Strategic & International Studies’ Turkey Project.

Oil raced to the $90-per-barrel mark last week and is starting this week off the same way.

Aliriza said any Turkish incursion would not create a new war zone around Iraq’s oil fields or pipelines.

The Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, which Ankara says is using bases in northern Iraq mountains to plan and carry out attacks in Turkey, is threatening to respond to the Turkish military by targeting Turkish pipelines.

Read my entire story for UPI here.

For more on the dispute between Turkey and the PKK, check out Mark Tran’s backgrounder in The Guardian.

Regardless of motive, there are plenty of reasons to keep watch on the dispute between the U.S. and three allies.

A Turkish invasion of Iraq over the Kurdish separatist group based in the northern Iraq mountains highlights — and risks escalating — the tension between Washington and allies Turkey, Iraq and Iraq’s Kurds.

Turkey is mad at the United States for what it sees as the selective prosecution of the war on terrorism, among other reasons, and blames Iraq’s national government and the Kurdistan Regional Government for not stopping the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, known by its initials PKK.

Read my entire story (a second piece) for UPI here.

The Hunt for Hunt Oil

The future of (Iraqi) Kurdistan may be written with the help of Hunt Oil, writes Jim Landers in The Dallas Morning News, but the “Drilling contract with Kurds could lead to regional autonomy – or aggravate sectarian strife.”

Jebel Semroot is a dusty heap of rocks plowed and grazed by tough farmers and tougher goats. But this hill surrounding the village of Assyan, where Dallas-based Hunt Oil Co. hopes to drill next year, could have hundreds of millions of barrels of oil trapped beneath it.

Chief executive Ray Hunt flew to Iraq in September to sign an exploration agreement covering Jebel Semroot with Iraq’s Kurdistan Regional Government.

Trouble is, Jebel Semroot isn’t in Kurdish territory. If Hunt Oil drills in these rocks, the company will be helping the Kurds absorb lands in Nineveh province that were historically Kurdish but are still claimed by Iraq’s Arab Sunnis.

Iraq’s Fuel

IraqSlogger.com reports in their weekly price check that petrol prices in Baghdad neighborhoods have dropped after a spike last week.

Society, Security and Politics

Ask the Iraqis, Lawrence Wright argues in The New Yorker, when contemplating the future of Iraq, including U.S. troop involvement.

The Iraq Press Roundup by UPI’s Hiba Dawood.

Twelve former U.S. Army Captains write an eye-opening op-ed titled: The Real Iraq As We Saw It.

This week marks five years since the authorization of military force in Iraq, setting Operation Iraqi Freedom in motion. Five years on, the Iraq war is as undermanned and under-resourced as it was from the start. And, five years on, Iraq is in shambles. …

There is one way we might be able to succeed in Iraq. To continue an operation of this intensity and duration, we would have to abandon our volunteer military for compulsory service. Short of that, our best option is to leave Iraq immediately. A scaled withdrawal will not prevent a civil war, and it will spend more blood and treasure on a losing proposition.

America, it has been five years. It’s time to make a choice.

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