Iraq Oil Report

(Apologies. I am travelling and the brief format of today’s update reflects that. Monday brings normalcy to the Iraq Oil Report.)

Syria Plans $3 Billion Refinery to Process Iraqi Oil, Maher Chmaytelli writes for Bloomberg.

-

Iraq, other Arab states will supply Europe with gas next year, the Gulf Daily News reports.

-

Opportunities in Iraq have been customized to be more international investor friendly, a top official at the Gulf Iraq Expo said, Reyadh Hussein reports for Gulf Daily News.

-

The calamity of Iraq has not even won us cheap oil, Geoffrey Wheatcroft writes in The Guardian.
-

Turkey has started to impose economic sanctions on Iraqi Kurdistan by stopping flights between Istanbul and the Kurdish capital, Arbil. The Kurdish leader Massoud Barzani said yesterday that Turkey had closed its airspace “not only to Kurdistan but also to Baghdad,” Patrick Cockburn writes in The Independent.

-

Iraq’s President and Kurdish leader Jalal Talabani is being investigated by the Istanbul public prosecutor’s office for ties to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, IraqSlogger reports.

-

There are increasing signs that Turkey’s threat to stage a military incursion into northern Iraq against camps of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) is straining the country’s ties with its Muslim allies, Gareth Jenkins writes in the Eurasia Daily Monitor.

-

The much touted “surge” of U.S. troops in Baquba has caused more problems that it has solved, residents say, Ahmed Ali reports for Inter Press Service.

-

In key Iraqi area, U.S. starts pulling back. Starting next month, 3,500 troops will leave two central provinces in a major test of Iraqi readiness, Sam Dagher and Gordon Lubold report in The Christian Science Monitor.

-

The Iraq Press Roundup, by UPI’s Hiba Dawood.

-

The Province of Basra has made it clear that it has no capacity to accommodate the increasing numbers of Iraqis seeking refuge there, Basra’s deputy governor said, Azzaman reports.
————–