Iraq Oil Report

Plus:
*Iraq oil exports up last year
*But the northern pipeline is down
*And last week production dropped
*Oil Minister in Davos says OPEC output OK
*Babil province talking tough over blackouts

Despite rumors that oil law negotiations were going to restart, it appears not so, United Press International reports. The Kurdistan Regional Government and the national government have not come to terms on how the law will distribute control over the oil fields. The KRG has gone forward unilaterally, passing their own regional law and signing dozens of deals with foreign firms. And you can imagine that the national government is not happy. All of this was to be discussed.

And there were talks of a top level U.S. State Department official would return to Baghdad to help facilitate. That also is not happening.

Iraq’s crude oil exports averaged 1.63 million barrels a day in 2007, some 9.2% more than in 2006, the Iraqi oil ministry said Thursday, Hassan Hafidh reports for Dow Jones Newswires. The south, where most of the oil is and most of the exports head to market, remained steady amidst intra-Shiite fighting. A new security plan guarding the northern pipeline also started working in the last months of 2007. The increase in exports doesn’t necessarily reflect a large growth in production, or realistic capacity. In December there were outages in the refineries, so oil production usually destined to become fuel in Iraq was instead redirected to exports.

There’s now a new report that the northern pipeline has been shut because of damage and reserves of Kirkuk oil in the Turkish port are low.

Iraq oil production averaged 2.10 million barrels per day last week, according to the State Department’s Iraq Weekly Status Report. Iraq averaged 2.3 million bpd in December. United Press International reports there are some questions as to how much oil Iraq is producing and exporting.

Iraq’s Oil Minister, speaking from the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, said there’s no need for OPEC to increase production as oil prices have started to settle, Reuters reports. OPEC production actually increased from November to December. Ironically, the production figures came out the day President Bush was in the Middle East asking OPEC to produce more.

Iraq’s national power outage has prompted the head of Babil province to send Baghdad an ultimatum: Give us electricity or we’ll take it, UPI reports. Babil is not alone. The entire country suffers from a lack of fuel and electricity.

The leading Democratic presidential candidates and their allies on Capitol Hill have launched fierce attacks in recent days on a White House plan to forge a new, long-term security agreement with the Iraqi government, complaining that the administration is trying to lock in a lasting U.S. military presence in Iraq before the next president takes office, Michael Abramowitz reports for The Washington Post. Iraq’s Parliament, as well, doesn’t like the deal. Both countries’ leaders are trying to sign the security pact without consulting their legislative branches. And both legislative branches say their respective constitutions don’t allow that.

Up to 25 million land mines, or almost one for every Iraqi, remain buried in thousands of minefields across Iraq and are hampering development of rich oil deposits, officials said on Wednesday, Reuters reports.Iraqi government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh said the mines were spread across about 4,000 minefields left across Iraq after the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq War, the first Gulf War in 1991 and the 2003 U.S.-led invasion to topple Saddam Hussein.

Two top Democrat Congressmen are urging President Bush to increase the budget for Iraq’s millions of displaced persons.

Meanwhile, another tranche of 350 million Iraqi dinars (about US$290,000) has been allocated by the Iraqi parliament to cope with the needs of internally displaced persons (IDPs), a lawmaker said on 23 January, according to the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. “This amount will help displaced families living in makeshift camps and compounds which, for many reasons, did not receive enough aid from government and non-governmental organizations [NGOs],” said Abdul-Khaliq Zankana, head of parliament’s displacement committee.

Jeffrey Goldberg writes in The Atlantic on the faults and follies of U.S. and Western attempts to define and redefine boundaries in the Middle East, especially Iraq. He starts with the Kurds: “Not long ago, in a decrepit prison in Iraqi Kurdistan, a senior interrogator with the Kurdish intelligence service decided, for my entertainment and edification, to introduce me to an al-Qaeda terrorist named Omar. “This one is crazy,” the interrogator said. “Don’t get close, or he’ll bite you. …”

What’s in Iraq’s editorial pages? Find out in the Iraq Press Roundup by UPI’s Hiba Dawood.

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