Iraq Oil Report

(Short post today, en route to Riyadh for the OPEC Summit)

The U.S. is building a military installation at one of Iraq’s oil ports on the Gulf. Eventually, it is to be turned over to the Iraq Navy, Chip Cummins and Hassan Hafidh report for The Wall Street Journal.

Their story also includes a good slideshow showing the situation at the oil terminal.

More on the 12 oil deals the Kurdistan Regional Government has signed in two weeks by Kathleen Ridolfo at Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.

Sixteen U.S. and European firms asked to bid for Kirkuk oil.

Iraq to amend the oil refinery privatization bill.

Commentaries on Iraq and U.S. policy

US loses wattage to China in Iraq, by Dmitry Shlapentokh in the Asia Times Online.

Recently, the US media reported what seems to be a not very important event: China is among the countries that has received contracts for building electric power plants in Iraq. Still, close scrutiny of the event revealed a lot about the nature of not so much China’s but the US’s foreign policy and political system, and the real state of the US economy.

The very fact that China was invited to build power stations in Iraq looks like a rather surprising development. The point is that this should be done by the Americans, who not only have the expertise but - and this should be quite an important consideration - have allocated literally billions of dollars of taxpayer money for Iraqi “reconstruction”, ie, providing the country with essential services, without which, as the George W Bush administration rightly asserts, a stable government is not possible. Still, after several years of work and all the billions spent, as one Iraqi official acknowledged, little has been done to provide even such essentials as electricity.

Lawrence of Arabia is out of place in Iraq, by Anthony Bubalo in the Financial Times.

At the British military headquarters at Kandahar, there is a pretty mural of the Afghan  countryside with the following quote beneath it: “It is better to let them do it themselves imperfectly, than do it yourself perfectly. It is their country, their way and our time is short.” …

Ominously for the US, the quotation was also found at the site of America’s last big defeat by insurgents. James Fenton and John Pilger, in separate accounts of the fall of Saigon in 1975, both mention seeing it framed on the wall of the abandoned US embassy. One wonders how long it was there. It does not seem to have helped.
Today, Lawrence-isms are recycled by everyone from the commander of US forces in Iraq, Gen David Petraeus, to field officers and “grunts” writing on counter-insurgency weblogs.