Iraq Oil Report

An oil deal signed between Russian oil giant Lukoil and Saddam Hussein has long been relegated as null and void by Iraq’s Oil Ministry. It’s for a major oil field, with 11 billion barrels, but Iraq says Saddam cancelled it and would not uphold or renegotiated any deals that weren’t active at the time of the regime’s overthrow.

Lukoil claims otherwise and is contemplating international courts to challenge it.
Andrew E. Kramer and James Glantz report in The New York Times Russia may also renege on a 2004 debt forgiveness deal.

Iraq’s Oil Minister reiterated its terms for the $4 billion deal: there is none, it will be bidded on when the national oil law is passed, Paul Tait reports for Reuters.

Smuggling Iraq’s Fortunes

15,000 barrels of oil go unaccounted for each day in Iraq, the head of the Iraq Board of Supreme Audit said, diverted to Iran and other Gulf countries, reports Hassan Hafidh of Dow Jones Newswires.

Two former Iraq Oil Ministers say the fuel smuggling operations, which are perhaps more widespread than raw crude, are being done under the arms of political and religious factions and their militias, Nidhal al-Laithi reports for Azzaman.

The Turkish Invasion

Turkey’s Prime Minister was in Washington, meeting with President Bush while American Kurds protested outside, as the decision on whether to invade Iraq draws near.

Prime Minister Erdogan said he’d wait until after the meeting to make the call on going after the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), Turkish Kurdish guerillas who want more rights for Turkish Kurds. An estimated 3,000 are holed up in the mountains lining the Iraq-Turkish border. Iraq’s Kurdistan Regional Government is blamed by Turkey for turning a cheek, if not aiding the PKK.

“I am expecting that this trip will result with the United States taking solid steps,” Erdogan said, Deborah Haynes and Tom Baldwin report in The Times Online. The report also includes a brief time line on the PKK.

The PKK is considered a terrorist organization by the United States, Turkey and Iraq. It has conducted a number of attacks in Turkey, which killed dozens recently. The PKK and Turkey have been fighting for decades, with an estimated 30,000 to have died. Turkey has attempted to route the PKK from northern Iraq in the past, with no success.

The threat, however, has had an effect already. The PKK is moving from Iraq to Iran (which, along with Syria, also has a sizeable Kurdish population), Patrick Cockburn reports in The Independent.

KRG Prime Minister Nechirvan Barzani, calls for dialogue in op-ed in the Washington Post.

The Turkey-Kurd beef is decades in the making and won’t be ended with a quick fix, writes Dennis Ross of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy in The New Republic.

The PKK has support within the Iraqi Kurdish community, writes Bobby Caina Calvan for McClatchy Newspapers.

As each smuggler passes, the sentry stretches out his hand and the smuggler pays, sometimes a dollar’s worth of Iranian tumans, sometimes $5 worth.

The sentry identifies himself as a member of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, the PKK, the rebel group that has inflamed Turkish anger with attacks that have killed 30 Turkish soldiers in the last month. The U.S. State Department has included the group on its terrorist list for years.

The sentry, however, is hardly in hiding. He’s in plain view of a checkpoint atop a nearby bluff, manned by a member of the peshmerga, the regional militia of the Kurdish Regional Government, the U.S.-allied rulers of northern Iraq.

Andrew Lee Butters has the perspective of Massoud Barzani, co-leader of Iraqi Kurds along with Jalal Talabani, as a “friend of the Turkish people,” but ready to meet Turkish troops with Kurdish troops if the incursion takes place.

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