The Kurdistan Regional Government once again makes good on its pledge to develop its own oil sector with or without Baghdad.
It announced seven more deals with international oil firms Tuesday, with companies based in Austria, India and the United States, among others.
“There has been great interest in Kurdistan’s exploration acreage,” KRG Minister of Natural Resources Ashti Hawrami said Tuesday in announcing the new contracts. “We are pleased to be able to meet that demand.”
The KRG has also awarded four exploration blocks to the Kurdistan Exploration and Production Company. The Kurdistan National Oil Company will develop the Khurmala oil field, which has already been discovered, and build a refinery to supply the KRG Electricity Ministry.
More on this deal Wednesday.
The Turkish Invasion
The protest sign was plain enough, black ink on white poster board. But the message Jamel Numan was carrying amidst 200 of America’s Iraqi Kurds rallying outside the White House Monday was both simply blunt and highlighted the overlooked complexity of Turkey’s beef with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party guerrillas: “Is this really about PKK? Or is this about Kirkuk?”
Numan, a 53-year-old now living in Nashville, a hub of American Kurds, echoed the fears of Kurds — that Turkey is amassing troops on their border “so they can take over the Kurdish region of Iraq.”
Inside the White House Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and President Bush discussed Turkey’s threats to take military action against the Turkish Kurd separatist strongholds in Iraqi mountains on the other side of the Turkish border.
An estimated 3,000 PKK guerrillas are based in the Qandil Mountains, where Turkey alleges the most recent of the PKK’s decades-old campaign has been planned. Eight kidnapped Turkish troops were released Sunday in a brief slowdown of bluster between the sides. But the PKK, which the United States and Turkey recognize as a terrorist group, has killed dozens of troops and citizens in attacks in recent months. …
“Clearly the Turks got themselves into a pickle by pressing for change when clearly the Americans weren’t going to give them the green light to go into Iraq,” said Joost Hiltermann, director of the International Crisis Group’s Middle East Project. Now the United States must “help Turkey down without alienating the Kurds in Iraq.”
Jim Muir of the BBC reports on The Political Dance of the Turkish Troops’ Release.
Society, Security and Politics
The U.S. will free Iranians it captured in Iraq, the BBC reports.
