Iraq Oil Report

Plus:

Electricity levels are bullish but details in the report are wanting

Iraqis pay more to fill gas tank, if they can find fuel

A U.S. review of Iraq reconstruction finds Iraq oil production down compared with this time last year, though capacity is up.

Electricity production has hit record wartime levels, but both sectors need to work together and both must combat insurgent attacks, according to the Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction’s quarterly report, released Tuesday.

Iraq oil production averaged 2.16 million barrels per day in third-quarter 2007, as the northern pipeline was fixed and better guarded than before.

“It is important to note, however, that this quarter’s production lags slightly behind the same period last year,” the report said. It also pegged production capacity at 3 million bpd.

And there is poor coordination between the Oil and Electricity ministries, which rely on each other to function properly and give Iraqis some of their most basic needs.

Read my entire story for UPI HERE.

Iraq Slogger notes an important difference in the third quarter report, compared to the second quarter: there are a lot fewer details, including of how the sector went from summer collapse to fall success.

Overall, in fact, SIGIR’s assessment of the state of Iraq’s electricity is skimpier than in previous quarterly reports, which leaves the “Electricity Output Breaks Record” item an attractive and uncomplicated lede for media coverage, as it did in USA Today’s piece on the report. …

Iraq’s Ministry of Electricity has reported that Iraq’s electricity grid nearly collapsed this summer, that this year was the worst for power outages since the summer of 2003, and that some Baghdad neighborhoods enjoyed only a few hours of electricity per day.

Read the entire SIGIR report HERE.

The power situation, let alone the glowing SIGIR report, isn’t helped by an article by Ali al-Mawsaiw in Azzaman that a number of power plants are not working because they lack fuel.

Fueling Iraq

Iraq Slogger’s weekly fuels price check finds the country still pays much more for fuel than the state-set price.

Slogger tracked auto fuel price trends in 10 of Iraq’s 18 provinces. The data is for black market fuel, more expensive than the state price but much more available.

Data from Qadisiya was blocked by ongoing violence in Diwaniya city, but the province was by far the month’s most expensive place to buy fuel earlier this month and there’s no reason for the trend to stop.

Basra held some of the least expensive fuel at the start of the month, but has trended to the middle of the 10 province pack, which aside from Qadisiya ranges from 400 Iraqi dinars per liter, the state-set price, (about $1.20 USD per gallon) to 800 dinars.

Diyala and Baghdad have the most expensive fuel.

Check out Iraq Slogger’s data and graphs HERE.

Security in the North and South

The security file for Basra, where most of the oil is located and nearly all gets sold to the world, will be handed over to Iraqis in December.

In a preview, part of border security was handed over this week.

Turkey’s prime minister comes to Washington next week. After, he’s supposed to make a final decision on whether to send Turkish troops into Iraq to combat the separatist Kurdish guerillas holed up in the northern Iraq mountains.

But the squeeze is on militarily, as businesses and money connected to Iraq’s Kurdistan Regional Government’s Barzani leadership are caught up in the economic embargo, Jale Ozgenturk reports for Referans.

A gradual economic embargo is being imposed on firms connected to Iraqi Kurdish leader Massoud Barzani and flights to the northern Iraqi city of Arbil have been stopped, said Ercüment Aksoy, the head of the Foreign Economic Relations Council’s (DEİK) Turkish-Iraqi Business Committee in an exclusive interview with business daily Referans last week.

The decisions made in the National Security Council (MGK) and the steps taken are positive, according to Aksoy. “The embargo will be against individuals, institutions and sectors who are collaborating with the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). Turkey does not want to punish the Iraqi people,” he said.

Turkey had a trade volume of $5 billion with Iraq in 2005, and it stands at $1,250 billion for the first six months of this year. A trade volume of $4 to 4.5 billion is aimed for by year end. “It does not matter if our loss amounts to $5 billion or $50 billion. We will do anything for Turkey,” Aksoy said, in response to any possible negative effects of the embargo on trade volume.

Turkey has continued an offensive against PKK near the border, and tough talk and bluster is increasing.

President Bush can blame only himself, argues Henri J. Barkey, Lehigh University’s International Relations Department chair and a state department official from 1998-2000, writes in the Washington Post.
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