Iraq Oil Report

Plus: A Turkish Invasion Update
Iraq Oil Smuggling and Keeping Tabs on the Loot
Iraqis Against Biden
Remembering King Faisal II

The U.S. is reiterating its plea to international oil not to sign oil deals in Iraq prior to a national oil law.

“We continue to advise companies from outside of Iraq that they incur significant political and legal risk in signing any contracts with any party inside of Iraq before a national (oil) law package is passed by the Iraq parliament,” said Lawrence Butler, deputy assistant secretary in the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs.

A handful of companies have signed deals with the Kurdistan Regional Government, which has passed its own regional oil law, moves that has bolstered the wedge between it and the central government. Hunt Oil Corp. was the first U.S. firm to sign a deal, which created additional tension in Washington.

“These contracts have needlessly elevated tensions between the KRG and the central government who share a common interest in passage of a national hydrocarbons framework and revenue sharing laws,” Butler, who oversees U.S. policy in Iraq, told an annual conference of U.S. and Arab policymakers.

Butler also voiced his concern about Iraq’s Parliament’s inability to pass the oil law.

The Turkish Invasion

The Turkish military won’t make any major moves against the Kurdish separatists alleged to be launching attacks from northern Iraq mountains until after Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan meets with President Bush Nov. 5 in Washington.

‘Major moves’ is relative, however. A tit-for-tat economic battle is brewing as Turkey blames Iraq’s Kurdistan Regional Government for not doing enough to stop the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) if not supporting them outright.

Turkey is threatening to close the main border crossing, cut off electricity and outlaw Turkish firms. Turkish companies are a major source of economic development in northern Iraq, including in the oil sector.

In response, Iraqi Parliament Speaker Mahmoud al-Mashhadani says it will cut off the Iraqi crude piped north into Turkey.

Iraq sent a delegation to Ankara to try to smooth things out, but IraqSlogger reports matters are now worse.

Ankara continues to make limited strikes on the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) guerillas, as it has done for years. Plus there are an estimated 1,700 Turkish troops at the Bamarani airfield near Dohuk, stationed since the 1990s. They’re not near the mountains where the PKK are based, but could be put in motion.

But the buildup continues of Turkish troops on the border with Iraq, and air raids continue.

This is growing Kurdish sympathy and solidarity with the PKK, Crispin Thorold reports for the BBC.
If the fighting escalates, Turkey’s role as a major energy transit country for the world could be at risk, John C.K. Daly reports for UPI.

Stephen Zunes writes for Foreign Policy In Focus The United States and the Kurds: A Brief History.

More Iraq Oil News

An Iraqi oil worker was one of two oil workers kidnapped in Sudan, Reuters reports.

Oil smuggling and other illegal activity is a major funder of Iraq’s rampant militias and gangs, Alexandra Zavis reports for the Los Angeles Times.

Keeping track of the $21 billion in Iraq Relief and Reconstruction Funds hasn’t always worked. A new U.S. Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction review highlights the difficulties faced when trying to close out a contract.

For example, work on one of the early reconstruction contracts commonly referred to as Restore Iraqi Oil was completed in 2004 but the contract remains open principally because the required audits have not been completed.

(U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’) Southwest Division, which is responsible for managing this contract, estimates that the normal time frame for closing out a cost-reimbursement contract is three to five years after work is completed. But the Southwest Division expects that closeout of the Restore Iraqi Oil contract may take longer than five years due to delays in completing audits of the contractor’s incurred costs.

The Biden Plan Fallout

A group of Iraqi-Americans in the Washington, D.C., area have started an online petition against Sen. Joseph Biden’s amendment to the Defense Authorization bill that calls for U.S. policy to engage Iraq’s government to decentralize authority. Many, especially in Iraq, call it “partition,” and it has actually been a semi-unifier of factions in Parliament.

Pandora’s Box: Iraqi Federalism, Separatism, “Hard” Partitioning and US Policy is the new report by Anthony Cordesman at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Remembering King Faisal II

The comparison of Iraq right now – between the Saddam era and the post-Saddam era – has Muwaffaq Tikriti reminiscing about King Faisal II.

“I’m not for monarchy,” Tikriti said, “but Iraq was progressing.”

Faisal led Iraq for five years, until being overthrown in a coup and executed in the courtyard of his palace, along with the royal family. It was a time of ongoing revolution in Iraq and the Arab world. Brigadier General Abdul Karim Qassim took over, overthrown by Col. Abdul Salam Arif, succeeded after death by Abdul Rahman Arif, then Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr, followed by Saddam Hussein.

“I have grown up as a teenager like any other teenager in the late fifties and early sixties; a sympathizer of all the revolutionary slogans of that era,” Tikriti wrote in an e-mail to friends recently.

“Growing up and looking back and comparing the last three quarters of the century in which one quarter, Iraq was a monarchy and 2 quarters Iraq was a “revolutionary” against everything and everyone.

We have entered a tunnel of prohibition (nothing is allowed) and we developed a war culture that has never been paralleled by any in the history (three wars in 23 years) other than the internal wars and bloodshed.

In the 70’s, I thought (and most Iraqis did) there would be nothing on earth worse than Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr.

When the Iraqi Iran war started, I thought has it been al-Bakr still in power, the Iraq-Iran War would have never happened.

I started regretting my envisioning Al-Bakr, being the utmost worst. Saddam was much worse and by far. There was no comparison.

Iraq has been deteriorating to the extent that we lost being a state. It was a terrifying Hitchcock horror movie of snowballing and domino effects.”

Tikriti, 63, grew up in “old Baghdad,” the son of a well-read general, but left Iraq in 1976. He was educated at Baghdad College, an American Jesuit school, whose alumni include former Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, Vice President Adil Abdul Mahdi and Ahmed Chalabi. Tikriti, a pharmacist by degree now living in Montreal, returned to Baghdad after the fall of Saddam as a top official in the Ministry of Health.

He calls himself “secular,” arguing against the mixing of religion into politics that is so embedded in today’s Iraq.

“I’m an independent, I’m an Iraqist,” he said, adding “I am not a Saddam loyalist,” a defense against the common accusation of someone critical of the Baghdad powers that be now.

With this lament, Tikriti has begun making slideshows, photographs of King Faisal touring the world, including the United States, meeting with political and business leaders, backed by a soundtrack of sweet Iraqi chords. Tikriti has been in the Iraqism movement for more than three decades, and he is trying to re-educate Iraqis about Iraq, “showing the treasures of the Iraqi culture,” he said, “the King Faisal slide show is part of the bigger picture.”

“We made the mistake. This is not a political message; it’s a historical message,” he said.

“We have to have the courage to say what is right and what is wrong,” he wrote in his e-mail to friends. “I really regret all those revolutionary ideas that I grew up with and stand up to say loud and clear ‘I was wrong.’ This slide show is a tribute to a King that was not given a chance, to the last Royal in Iraq. To the young gentleman that was slaughtered without justice. It was a murder crime that was the onset of many (very many) more to come.”

(Note: Apparently the audio is not working correctly on the slides. If you would like a copy of the slides, send me a note at contact@iraqoilreport.com and I’ll e-mail the slideshow to you.)

——–