Iraq Oil Report

Violence is steady, and deadly, in Kirkuk and Basra, where combined more than 90 percent of Iraq’s reserves are located.
The violence is less related to fighting terrorists than it is to finding a solution to the power struggle in Iraq.

A pipeline from Iraq to Iran is being built, according to press reports. The Ministry of Oil plans to increase exports and production through this and other pipelines, but this is the first groundbreaking we’re hearing. Also to watch: a proposed but separate, Oil Minister Shahristani told me, pipeline sending products refined from Iraqi oil, in Iranian refineries, back to Iraq.

From the ‘How are you going to operate an oil sector if…’ desk

14 percent of Iraqis – equivalent of 42 million Americans – are not able to live in their homes, McClatchy Newspapers reports.

As Juan Cole, Middle East expert at the University of Michigan puts it on his website, Informed Comment: “I mean, it is a Stephen King-style futuristic apocalypse for Iraq. Only it has just happened, during the past 4 1/2 years. And the American government is responsible for kicking it off. Every time I hear in the US media about how “well” Iraq is going now, I want to spit.”

Attacks on educators continue in Iraq, Doug Smith of the Los Angeles Times reports.

Plus…

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

From the Marine Corps Warfighting Laboratory:

Counterinsurgency in Iraq: Theory and Practice, 2007

And the presentation given by Dr. David Kilcullen at the Counterinsurgency Seminar ’07 Marine Corps Base Quantico, Virginia.

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