Iraq Oil Report

Big Oil’s big dreams are close to coming true as Iraq’s Oil Ministry prepares deals for the country’s largest oil fields with terms that aren’t necessarily what companies were hoping for but considered a foot in the door of the world’s most promising oil sector. …

The decision of how to develop a resource that provides for nearly the entire federal budget is political and controversial. To each side’s alarm, the national government will rely on a Saddam-era law and Iraq’s Kurdish region is signing deals on its own.

Details of negotiations between the ministry and international oil majors are being kept quiet, though media are picking up on pieces of deal-making. …

Oil Minister Hussain al-Shahristani said he’s moving forward with oil deals despite the lack of a new national oil law, a draft of which has been stalled in negotiations for more than a year.

“This has nothing to do with the national oil law. There is no timeline. Whenever we finish our discussions we’ll just sign the contracts,” he told UPI on the sidelines of the OPEC heads of state summit last month.

“This is basically technical-support contracts,” he said, adding the contracts will not be the result of a bidding process. “Selected companies will offer us technical support that we need to develop our producing fields.”

Develop producing fields? “Yes, only.”

With the companies who are helping to, who have been studying them, who have been doing this work? “Yes. Exactly. That’s right.”

How many fields? “We will not be announcing anything until we sign the contracts.”

Super giants? “They are the super giants, yes.”

Click HERE to read my entire story for United Press International.

The Battle For Basra & Iraq’s Oil, a report from Basra by independent filmmaker Rick Rowley of Big Noise Films, produced for Al Jazeera English Rowley, David Enders and Hiba Dawood, with the support of the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.

Watch it HERE via Democracy Now!

Details on Shanghai Heavy Industry’s $940M power deal, by Lynne Roberts for ArabianBusiness.com.

Pushed Out of Baghdad, Insurgents Move North, Michael R. Gordon reports for The New York Times.

…The relatively small concentration of American forces in Nineveh has attracted insurgents, who have long sought to exploit ethnic tensions in the region by portraying themselves as the defenders of Sunni interests against Kurdish expansionism. Mosul is also close to Syria, which has often been a conduit for foreign fighters.

Insurgents from Baghdad, Diyala and Ramadi first appeared in the western part of Nineveh six months ago and later in Mosul, Colonel Twitty said.

To finance their activities here, the insurgents have been diverting oil shipments from the Baiji refinery in northern Iraq, and skimming funds from a host of other enterprises, including a local cement plant and car dealerships, according to Lt. Col. Eric Welsh, the commander of the Second Battalion, Seventh Cavalry Regiment, which recently completed its tour of duty here. …

Home, unsweet home in Iraq’s ancient marshlands, AFP reports.

Iraq’s Marsh Arabs were targeted by Saddam Hussein and their land was drained because the dictator wanted to route out any Shiite adversaries.

The tribal society moved inland and are now one of the many armed groups that are neither outright al-Qaida nor Mahdi Army, but armed nonetheless, in the oil capital of Basra.

From Leila Fadel’s Baghdad Observer blog, published as part of McClatchy Newspapers’ Baghdad bureau service:

My friend and Iraqi colleague’s son walked into the newsroom tonight and banged his head against the desk gently.
“I’m bored,” he said and looked down. …

“Sometimes you want a real person to hang out with,” he said. “I just want one real friend.” …

Even if he befriended someone, he couldn’t bring him or her home to play. No one can know his mother works as a journalist. Not only does she work with us, she and her family live here. Working for a foreign news agency could put her and her children’s lives in danger. …

A month ago gunmen came to his school and shot three guards during his last period. The U.S. Military came and the students ran out the door to catch their rides. That day he made it home safe. Tomorrow, he doesn’t know.

The burden he carries is not fit for a 13-year-old. But this is not an R-rated movie; you can’t keep the children out.

The Iraq Press Roundup by UPI’s Hiba Dawood.

Partitioning Iraq along sectarian lines is notch in al-Qaida’s belt, Shaun Waterman reports for UPI.

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