Iraq Oil Report

Plus:
*Iraqi Kurds, Iraqi Arabs, Washington and Ankara square up over the Turkish invasion into northern Iraq
*Kirkuk pipeline to Turkey stops
*Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq challenged in southern provincial strongholds
*Iraq Press Roundup
*Much, much more…

Iraq’s draft oil law is stalled in Parliament, the national government and Kurdistan Regional Government are moving forward with their own deals — unconstitutional, the each says of the other — and Iraq’s oil production is stalled at just more than 2 million barrels per day.

Perhaps it’s a good time to take a step back and recap the debate over Iraq’s oil sector and its possibilities. To do so, United Press International’s Ben Lando has reviewed three recently published documents providing contrasting and varying insight. It’s not exhaustive, but a good addition to an important discussion.

The first is “An Opinion Opposing the Existing Draft Iraqi Oil & Gas Law,” by Fouad al-Amir, a 70-year-old Iraqi resident with “40 years in the Iraqi Ministry of Oil,” according to an ex-Iraqi oil official. …

The Iraq National Accord, a political party led by former Iraq Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, who is angling to replace current Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s governing coalition, has issued a critique of the current process of the oil and gas law, as well as of the national Oil Ministry. …

While the timeline for finding agreement on the oil law is unknown, a new report from the Center for Global Energy Studies says there is much than can, and should, be done to enhance Iraq’s hydrocarbons sector in the meantime.

Read the entire article by Ben Lando. Click HERE.

KRG Prime Minister Nechirvan Barzani said the Iraqi government has been slow in dealing with Turkey’s incursion, he told Asharq Alawsat. He reiterated KRG calls for dialogue, and not military action to route the PKK, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, which Turkey says uses northern Iraq mountains as bases for attacks inside Turkey.

“As long as the administration in northern Iraq protects the PKK,” Murat Karagoz, first counselor at the Turkish Embassy in Washington, accused the KRG this week, “Turkey will not go into dialogue with local administration in the north.”
He specifically accused Massoud Barzani, President and co-leader of Iraq’s Kurds, of not condemning the PKK and threatening Turkey. “We will not go into dialogue with Barzani,” he said.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates left Ankara Thursday with few public promises that Turkey would limit its offensive, now entering its second week, which is using intelligence from the United States to target the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK. Turkish air and artillery strikes continued Thursday as ground forces sought to destroy bases in the remote, mountainous region of Iraq, Scott Peterson reports for The Christian Science Monitor.

“I measure quick in terms of days, a week or two, something like that, not months,” Mr. Gates said. It was the first time he had demanded a strict timeline for the Turkish operation to end, Richard A. Oppel Jr. and Mark Mazzetti report for The New York Times.

President Bush in a press conference Thursday was less specific, though backing Gates. Turkey should “achieve their objective” but the incursion “shouldn’t be long-lasting.” The two may not, however, be mutually exclusive. This is the 20th something time Turkey has chased the PKK inside northern Iraq, and has had four bases there for a decade, and still the PKK survives and bombs.

Turkish military leaders as well as Turkish papers have reported success in northern Iraq, but how effective has the invasion been? US and Iraqi leaders are impatient, while Kurdish militants have probably melted away, Jürgen Gottschlich reports for Spiegel Online.

America’s Kurds have scheduled 10 protests across the country, including one Friday in front of the U.S. State Department.

From Pop Kek cakes to Mio soap, Turkish products dominate shop shelves in Iraq’s Kurdish north. So even as residents here seethe in anger at Turkey’s big military incursion into their homeland, they cannot afford to cut the economic lifeline with their larger neighbor, Sherko Raouf reports for Reuters. Thousands of Turkish troops crossed a remote part of the border last Thursday to hunt Kurdish PKK rebels who have used mountainous northern Iraq as a base to fight for self-rule in the mainly Kurdish southeast of Turkey since the 1990s. “I want an alternative to Turkish goods, but we’re not a manufacturing region, so we have to import. The closest place is Turkey,” said shopowner Cezar Abdeh in the border town of Zakhu, surrounded by Turk sweets, cosmetics and other imported goods.

The struggle between Kurds and Arabs for control of the city of Kirkuk and its oil amounts to a “ticking time bomb” in northern Iraq, according to the new United Nations envoy trying to broker a settlement, Bill Varner reports for Bloomberg News. Mediator Staffan de Mistura said in an interview that he has about four months left to solve “the mother of all crises” in Iraq. “If that takes place, we will have contributed substantially to avoiding a new conflict at the worst possible time,” he said.

Iraq halted exports of Kirkuk crude through its northern pipeline to Turkey on Wednesday but Iraqi officials said they expected pumping to resume by Friday morning, Reuters reports. An engineer with the Northern Oil Company in Kirkuk blamed a technical fault in a pumping unit for the halt, while a spokesman for the Oil Ministry in Baghdad, Asim Jihad, said it was due to routine maintenance of the pipeline.

This is very likely NOT as a result of the Turkish frustration with Baghdad and Irbil over the PKK, or visa-versa over the Turkish invasion. Both make money when the oil flows and neither are likely to reject it or shut it off, respectively, as punishment.

The provincial powers legislation, approved earlier this month, was rejected Wednesday. Meanwhile there’s talk of a growing unrest in the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s government, with the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq looking to replace the Dawa Party premier with one of their own.

While ISCI, which receives strong — albeit ironic — support from both the United States and Iran, won big in 2005 provincial council elections, largely due to the boycotts from rival Shiite as well as Sunni parties. The provincial powers law wasn’t an elections law – such a vote and governing structure is long overdue, Iraqis say – but did set a tentative timeline for the next poll, to be Oct. 1. Of course, that’s in the wind now that the Parliament will have to take up the law after the Presidential Council veto.

“The law and especially its provisions for early provincial elections had been resisted by ISCI and the Kurds, who control two of the three seats on the presidential council. The presidency council today emphasised that elections would go ahead on time, but the legislation is nevertheless sent back to parliament, ostensibly to sort out unspecified “constitutional” issues relating to the powers of the governors,” wrote Norwegian Institute of International Affairs research fellow Reidar Visser to his exclusive e-mail list. Visser is also an expert in Iraqi politics and editor of Historiae.org.

ISCI control of Nasiriyah, a southern city in Thi Qar province (many southern provinces are considered ISCI-controlled), is being challenged, Visser writes. “On 25 February, a two-thirds majority of the governorate council decided to dissolve the local security council and transfer its powers to the local police chief instead. … it is taking place in a setting - the provincial council - where no Sadrists are represented because they boycotted the January 2005 local elections. In other words, it is other Shiite Islamist forces, primarily Fadila but probably also at least some members of Daawa (Tanzim al-Iraq) that are behind the move. … Secondly, it is significant that ISCI’s opponents are deciding to strengthen the powers of the local police. This means that the image of full ISCI dominance in the security apparatuses of the south probably requires more nuance. … That could be a result of increased local competition by other local parties asserting themselves in the security apparatus, but it could also be an expression of a conflict between ISCI and parts of the security forces that are more loyal to Nuri al-Maliki (and the central government) than to Abd al-Aziz al-Hakim - two leaders that increasingly have been at odds with each other over the past months.”

Read Iraq’s editorial pages in the Iraq Press Roundup by UPI’s Hiba Dawood.

Iraqi journalists are warning that a new charter agreed by Arab ministers of information will roll back media freedom in the region, Bassim al-Shara reports for the Institute for War & Peace Reporting. The non-binding charter was drafted by Egypt and Saudi Arabia and adopted on February 12, following a meeting of the Arab League member states’ ministers of information in Cairo. Reports suggested that Lebanon and Qatar were the only Arab League members to raise concerns, but the Iraqi government, which did not attend the meeting, said it too opposed the charter. Iraqi media representatives, meanwhile, have slammed the proposed restrictions. “This charter could have been imposed during the era of Saddam’s regime,” agreed Hashim Hassan, a professor at the College of Media at Baghdad University.

U.S.-backed Sunni volunteer forces, which have played a vital role in reducing violence in Iraq, are increasingly frustrated with the American military and the Iraqi government over what they see as a lack of recognition of their growing political clout and insufficient U.S. support, Sudarsan Raghavan and Amit R. Paley reports for The Washington Post. Since Feb. 8, thousands of fighters in restive Diyala province have left their posts in order to pressure the government and its American backers to replace the province’s Shiite police chief. On Wednesday, their leaders warned that they would disband completely if their demands were not met.

Despite its very public saber-rattling against Iran, however, the United States has spent most of the past five years in a de facto alliance with Iran in support of the Shiite-led (and US-installed) regime in Baghdad. The most powerful component of that regime, the Islamic Supreme Robert Dreyfuss reports for The Nation in an article titled: Is Iran Winning the Iraq War? Council of Iraq (ISCI) and its disciplined Badr Corps militia, is also Iran’s closest Iraqi ally. Taking advantage of the political vacuum created by the US destruction of Saddam Hussein’s government, Tehran has established a vast presence, both overt and covert, in Iraq, with enormous influence among nearly all of its western neighbor’s Shiite and Kurdish parties. As a result, the Iraq of 2008 is a tale of two paradoxes.

The Iraq war has cost the US 50-60 times more than the Bush administration predicted and was a central cause of the sub-prime banking crisis threatening the world economy, according to Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz, Peter Wilson reports for The Australian.The former World Bank vice-president yesterday said the war had, so far, cost the US something like $US3trillion ($3.3 trillion) compared with the $US50-$US60-billion predicted in 2003.

The European Union has failed to improve the situation in Iraq despite committing more than €800 million (US$1.2 billion) to reconstruction efforts since 2003, a European Parliament report said Wednesday, The Associated Press reports. The report by the assembly’s foreign affairs committee called for the EU to expand its presence in the country, operate on the ground in the Kurdish region, among others, and boost its operations in Basra and Erbil.

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Plus:
*Latest on the Turkish incursion into northern Iraq
*Iraq oil experts meet in Paris
*Electricity workers, ministry agree to talk after sit-ins
*The Iraq Press Roundup
*Much, much more…

(Editor’s Note: Apologies to Iraq Oil Report’s subscribers who have received messages in triplicate over the past two days. IOR has resolved a problem with the host and this isn’t expected again. Thanks for your understanding.)

Iraq, Turkey and the United States will hold talks on energy issues March 1 in Istanbul, a day before an energy working group of Iraq’s neighbors meet. Murat Karagoz, first counselor at the Turkish Embassy in Washington, confirmed the meeting Tuesday, Ben Lando reports for United Press International. “To transport Iraqi natural gas to international markets is of great strategic importance,” he said.

Iraq’s government says the Turkish incursion is a violation of its sovereignty and calls for a withdrawal, Michael Kamber reports for The New York Times. Turkey sent troops into northern Iraq, part of the semiautonomous Kurdistan Regional Government’s territory, late last week. Their target is the PKK, or the Kurdistan Workers Party, a separatist group that kills people in the name of Kurdish rights. Turkey, which is the site for the killings, is slowly getting around to recognizing the rights of Kurds in its country.

Oil prices settled near $100 a barrel Tuesday. Although threats of an OPEC production decrease and the weakening dollar are also to blame, the Turkish incursion is as well. Well, at least it’s giving speculators and traders a reason to hike prices.

The incursion is not near northern Iraq’s oil production, which is nearly exclusive to Kirkuk just south of the KRG territory. Nor is it near the pipeline sending crude to Turkey, pumping at about 350,000 barrels per day. But military action is likely to strain relations between Turkey and Iraq’s Kurds, let alone Baghdad. Turkey benefits from its trade with Iraq, which is concentrated in the KRG, and if the Kurds are to produce any sizeable amounts of oil, they will need Turkish OK to export it.

Muqtada al-Sadr, the powerful Shiite cleric and leader of the Sadr Movement political party and Mahdi Army militia, has appealed to Turkey’s Muslim leaders and goodwill to end the siege, The Associated Press reports.

Turkey’s Today’s Zaman reports the invasion will end after the PKK bases in the Qandil Mountains are destroyed. The article says the border is being secured and then onto the mountain bases. It also says Baghdad and Washington were told the PKK is the sole target. Kurds, especially, say it’s about Kirkuk, the oil-rich northern town that is in dispute. The KRG wants it back in their territory, claiming Saddam Hussein ripped it from its historic Kurdish roots. Turkey, backing the ethnically related Turkomen who side with Iraqi Arabs in keeping Kirkuk from the KRG, fears Iraqi Kurdistan will become more powerful, even perhaps declare independence, and embolden its own Kurdish population.

National Security Advisor Muwaffaq al-Rubaie warned that the longer Turkey stays, the more likely the Peshmerga, the Kurds’ skilled security forces, will address the situation themselves, Al-Sharq al-Awsat reports in Arabic.

U.S. coverage of the conflict has been pretty weak, as University of Michigan Middle East expert Juan Cole points out on his website, Informed Comment. He publishes the coverage of Aljazeera English as proof its possible. (Note: Informed Comment is also the source of the above Rubaie scoop.)

Iraq oil experts are meeting in Paris in a somewhat secretive event, which Iraq Oil Report is told is closed to media. The Voices of Iraq news agency has a quick summary, including participants: “Mahdi al-Hafiz, Iraq’s former minister of planning and a member of parliament; Qusai Abdul Wahhab, a parliamentarian; Thamir al-Ghadban, a senior advisor to Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki; Adnan al-Mufti, the speaker of the Kurdish parliament; Ashti Hourami, the minister of natural resources in the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG); Ibrahim Bahr al-Uloum, the former minister of oil; Fouad Hussein, the head of the KRG’s presidency office; in addition to several researchers, including Fadil al-Jalbi, Muhammad Ali Zeini and Tareq Shafiq.”

“The idea of the conference stems from the need to hold systematic discussions on the Iraqi oil issue, especially in the aftermath of the emergence of a new liberal trend that dominated the country in the past five years, believing that the only way to democracy is to reduce the role of the state,” Dr. Haidar Saeed, a member of the Iraqi Research Center executive board, which co-sponsored the summit with the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique.
Editor’s Note: A previous edition of this post said the meeting was sponsored by the French oil firm Total. According to new information, Total is not involved.

Iraq’s electricity sector workers say a sit-in last week resulted in the power minister’s agreement to discuss their demands, UPI reports. Workers in Iraq’s Nasiriyah power station staged a sit-in, demanding the Electricity Ministry do more to help them keep the plant in operation, the Badr Newspaper reports. According to a statement by the International Federation of Chemical, Energy, Mine and General Workers’ Unions, sit-ins also took place in Basra, Hilla, Musayab and Kut, organized by the Union of Engineering technicians of the Federation of Workers’ Councils and Union in Iraq.

The Electricity Ministry, meanwhile, is asking the federal government for more funds for projects, and is criticizing the international business community for not bidding on contracts.

An Iraq Oil Report MUST READ

The Myth of the Surge: Hoping to turn enemies into allies, U.S. forces are arming Iraqis who fought with the insurgents. But it’s already starting to backfire. A report from the front lines of the new Iraq, Nir Rosen reports for Rolling Stone, on a story for which he got incredible access to U.S. and Iraqi security forces and the militias.

Patrick Cockburn reports in The Independent on increasing sectarian violence in the rest of the country.

“A suicide bomber detonated an explosive belt in a tent filled with Shia pilgrims walking to one of their holiest shrines south of Baghdad, killing at least 40 of them and wounding 60.

The attack shows that al-Qa’ida has restarted its bombings of Shia Iraqis, whom it sees as heretics, and remains capable of launching numerous suicide attacks on the same day in different parts of Iraq.

The claim by the US military of a significant drop in violence in Iraq is being dented by a rise in sectarian killings and by the Turkish invasion of Iraqi Kurdistan last Thursday in pursuit of Turkish Kurd PKK guerrillas. …”

The U.S. Army typically commissions a sort of lessons learned report of its activity, called the “After-Action Review.” The current Iraq War was no different except not only was the classified report kept behind closed doors, but a review for academics and journalists has been hidden as well, McClatchy Newspapers military columnist Joseph L. Galloway reports.

“Both versions of the volume of the report titled ”Rebuilding Iraq” are locked in the same vault, where they can do no good in educating officers or the American public to the realities that led to a near-catastrophic failure by both the military and civilians to plan for what would happen after we toppled Saddam Hussein’s government and as sumed control of a fractured, feuding nation of 25 million people.

The trouble, it seems, was that RAND’s team of more than 50 civilian and military researchers followed the trail of the failure from the Army’s part of the Pentagon to former Defense Secretary Donald L. Rumsfeld’s offices and on to the White House and State Department and elsewhere in the Bush administration. …”

A review of Iraq’s editorial pages, the Iraq Press Roundup by UPI’s Hiba Dawood.
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Plus:
*A recap of Iraq’s current and potential oil sector
*Petrel Resources gets Iraq oil extension, ready for bids
*Reliance Industries staying out
*Electricity Ministry demands more money to provide power
*Much, much more…

A coalition of U.S. veterans, unions and activists, who fear Iraq’s draft oil law is part of an orchestrated effort to turn Iraq’s oil reserves over to private international oil companies, said at a press conference in Washington Friday that such pressure should be kept up.

And they’re not alone. On Saturday there are similar actions to be taken around in England. Iraq’s tens of thousands strong oil unions, as well as other political parties and civil society organizations share their concern.

“Iraq oil is not war loot for the oil companies,” said Trina Zahller of Oil Change International. She said any oil law or long-term oil contracts made under occupation would be illegitimate.

“It seems like the oil industry is becoming ever more brazen” in entering the Iraq oil sector, she said, referring to statements made by top officials at Shell and ExxonMobil last week.

A draft law, stuck in Parliament, would pave the way, at least in part, to denationalizing Iraq’s oil sector, allowing international oil companies to sign long-term contracts. This is seen, by some, as a way to infuse the oil sector with much needed cash.
“Iraq needs more than anything is rule of law and will never get it under martial law,” said Adam Kokesh of Iraq Veterans Against the War, adding military and economic occupation is “inherently tied.”

Gene Bruskin of U.S. Labor Against the War, a coalition of U.S. unions with membership of around 3 million, said Iraq’s future success depends on Iraq keeping control of its oil resources and that to turn control over to oil companies and denationalize “is a total disaster.”

Halliburton was forced off a refinery project in 2003 by Iraq’s workers, who reformed their union despite still-valid Saddam Hussein-era laws preventing it. The company further irked Iraqis by bringing in foreign workers.

“Iraqi workers have been fighting for independence, the rights of union workers and against privatization ever since,” Bruskin said.
“We don’t propose to have the answer to it,” Zahller said during the march to a park in front of the White House, where activists rolled symbolic oil drums with “hands off Iraqi oil” written on the sides.

Zahller said Iraqis and their government should make the decision on how to govern the oil, but a sovereign decision can’t be made under occupation. “Whatever they determine is best, we’ll get behind that.”

At the same time, on the other side of the park, directly in front of the White House, about 30 Iraqis, mostly from Michigan, were waving Iraqi flags and carrying signs to “stop killing innocent Iraqis.”

The two protests were separate, one didn’t know of the other.

“We are American,” said Mustafa Alsaffi of the Global Voice of Peace Committee and the Samara Protest Committee. “Stop supplying Saudi Arabia,” he urged the U.S. government. “All the terrorists are coming from Saudi Arabia.”

The group blamed al-Qaida for bombing the holy mosques in Samara and instigating sectarian violence. The group was holding its fifth such protest since June ’07.

“They say they are Muslim,” Alsaffi said about al-Qaida, pointing out 15 of the 19 9/11 hijackers were Saudi, “but they are not.”

A primer on Iraq’s current and potential oil sector by CNN’s Erin Mclaughlin. While a quality quick read, one point of clarification are necessary:

The pending legislation is two pronged: the Oil and Investment Law and the Revenue Sharing Law. The Revenue Sharing Law, which will outline how the wealth will be divided between Sunnis, Shias and Kurds, is the more divisive of the two.

Actually, it’s four-pronged. There is a law that would reconstitute the Iraqi National Oil Company, presumably making it the lead quasi-government body to develop the Iraqi oil sector. And the law reorganizing the Ministry of Oil, moving it away from its current role in developing the oil and more to a regulatory role.

Lionel Beehner and Greg Bruno for the Council on Foreign Relations write a backgrounder on issues revolving around the Iraq oil law.

Ireland’s Petrel Resources has received a one-year extension on its Iraq oil project and has registered for future deals, the company said. The extension is in relation to the agreement to provide training and technology to Iraq’s Oil Ministry for the Marjan oil field, UPI reports. It is also moving forward on a project to assist the Iraqi State Co. for Oil Projects in developing the Subba & Luhais fields in southern Iraq. Petrel’s contract, signed in 2005, is a $197 million deal to help engineer, procure equipment and supervise construction of the fields’ expected oil and natural gas production.

More on Petrel from Jonathan Saul in Reuters and Thomson Financial.

India’s Reliance Industries did not pre-register for upcoming Iraqi oil bids, though deals with Iraqi Kurdistan may have disqualified it anyway, UPI reports. Iraq’s national Oil Ministry gave Feb. 18 as a deadline for oil companies interested in Iraqi oil tenders to pre-register. The world’s largest oil firms as well as an estimated more than 60 others did, according to unofficial tallies. “We analyzed the situation and decided not to make any further commitment in Iraq as of now,” a Reliance official told The Economic Times.

DNO, the Norwegian oil firm with assets in Iraqi Kurdistan, says it needs a route to send the oil if it’s to increase production.

“In 2008, DNO is targeting a substantial resource potential through an extensive exploration program and a step change in production could be achieved once export permit is in place in Kurdistan,” Managing Director Helge Eide said in a company statement, UPI reports. “During the last three months of 2007 we have delivered important operational results in Kurdistan. Re-testing of the Tawke-1 discovery well turned this well into the best producer to date and we revised the Tawke gross reserves by 130 percent. In addition we have re-commenced exploration activities in other areas of the PSAs in Kurdistan.”

A top European Commission energy adviser is in Baghdad to discuss an Iraq-EU “strategic partnership,” which the two sides announced earlier this month, UPI reports. Faouzi Bensarsa is building on joint energy cooperation plans, which include developing Iraqi natural gas for the Arab gas pipeline to feed European consumers. Ben Lando reported for UPI earlier this month on Europe’s hunger for Iraqi oil and gas.

Iraq’s Electricity Ministry is asking Baghdad to give it another $2.6 billion this year to repair and build new power stations, UPI reports. “Baghdad is getting only 1,000 megawatts,” Karim Wahid Hasan told a news conference in Baghdad, “instead of the 2,500 megawatts it needs as its power stations are not producing electricity because the eight oil and gas pipelines that supply them have been destroyed.”

More on the Minister’s plea for more funds by AFP.

Ukraine has imported its first ever shipment of Iraqi oil, a move due to a shortage of Russian crude, UPI reports. Ukrtatnafta, operator of the Kremenchug Oil Refinery, Ukraine’s largest, imported 586,400 barrels of Kirkuk oil this year, said Sergey Kuyun, executive director of the Ukraine energy consulting firm UPECO.

Iraq’s Kurds are moving towards taking control of the vital oil city of Kirkuk as one of the most explosive disputes bequeathed by Saddam Hussein nears a resolution, Damien McElroy reports for The Telegraph. It’s a good explanation of the situation in Kirkuk, minus the tone that it’s a foregone conclusion not only that there will be referendum to decide the disputed territory’s future, but that the choice will be simply to be or not to be part of the KRG.

Turkey’s mass invasion into northern Iraq is monumental for two reasons:

First, it’s the largest such move in more than a decade, Mark Bentley reports for Bloomberg News. Turkish troops brokered an end to violence between the Barzani and Talabani led factions of the Kurdish leadership. And it still maintains a base with troops in northern Iraq.

Second, Kurdish security forces, the Peshmerga, basically made the Turks look like punks for attempting to enter their territory. Leila Fadel and Yasseen Taha report for McClatchy Newspapers the Peshmerga stopped Turkish troops in tanks and armored vehicles, forced them back into their base, formed a perimeter around them, and threatened to start firing.

Turkey’s invasion into northern Iraq, despite being manhandled by the mightier Peshmerga, has set crude prices higher, Brian Baskin reports for The Wall Street Journal.

Iraq’s war widows struggle for financial survival, by Tony Perry and Tina Susman in The Los Angeles Times.

The rumor swept through this border town early in the morning, and soon several dozen women were clamoring outside a small government office.

The rumor proved false, as it had on many other days. There would be no distribution of pension payments for the Iraqi widows. Often, months pass between payments, with no provisions made for back payments and no explanations given for the gaps.

“I have nothing,” one widow cried to a government employee peeping out from a half-open door.

“My children need help,” cried another.

Of its unmet social needs, the central government’s failure to follow through on promises made to these widows is one of the most visible. Scenes like the one outside the Social Guardship Net office in Qaim are common.

“These protests are taking place in all the (18) provinces,” said Samira Musawi, a member of parliament and head of its committee on women and children. She has submitted legislation to provide housing, education and job training for widows and other low-income women, although it has yet to be acted on. …

The Iraq Press Roundup, a selection of Iraq’s editorial pages, by UPI’s Hiba Dawood.

As Iraq’s security situation deteriorates in the midst of resurgent violence, an increase in internal and external pressures facing the Awakening (Sahwa) Movement may jeopardize the prospects and goals set forth in the U.S. counter-insurgency strategy created by U.S. General David Petraeus, Ramzy Mardini writes in The Jamestown Foundation’s Terrorism Monitor.

Here in western Iraq on the border with Syria, there are signs of recovery amid wreckage left from the chaos brought by insurgents in Husaybah and such major battleground cities as Fallouja and Ramadi, Tony Perry reports for the Los Angeles Times. Although the central government in Baghdad and much of this war-torn nation is beset by sectarian and geographic rivalries, the U.S. government’s foreign-aid program efforts here are quietly showing what a little money can do. And, while still in their infancy, these efforts are catching on.

The Iraq Experience Project, part of the U.S. Institute of Peace’s Oral Histories Project on Stability Operations, which collects the full text of interviews with individuals involved in stability operations, to draw lessons learned and address the challenges of post-conflict intervention.
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Plus:
*Kurds considering legal action against Oil Minister
*Oil companies hold onto cash intended for Iraq
*Oil Ministry plans 300,000 barrel per day oil refinery in Nasiriyah
*The legislative progress minus oil

As the final day of registration closes, Iraq’s Oil Ministry said more than 70 firms from around the world have submitted papers, Reuters reports. Iraq has the world’s third largest oil reserves – and is highly underexplored – and needs major investment into its oil sector ravaged by war, sanctions and Saddam Hussein’s mismanagement.

The Oil Ministry is going to vet those companies and announce the names next month of those who will be able to bid on contracts.

“We are going to carefully study and check the documentation. Next month we will declare the companies which are permitted to work in the Iraqi oilfields,” Oil Ministry spokesman Asim Jihad told told Ahmed Rasheed of Reuters.

Oil Minister Hussain al-Shahristani has basically told oil companies who have signed with the Kurdistan Regional Government not to bother to preregister. He’s already cut SK Energy, the South Korean refiner, from importing Iraqi oil, as well as Austria’s OMV.
India’s Oil and Natural Gas Corp., ONGC, is one of the pre-registrants, Reuters reports.

The Kurdish semiautonomous rule is considering filing a case at Iraq’s constitutional court against the federal Oil Minister Hussein al-Shahristani for opposing oil deals signed by the Kurds with foreign companies, Hassan Hafidh reports for Dow Jones Newswires.

Iraq is inching toward attracting the billions of dollars needed to revamp its oil sector but international oil companies are still not ready to commit the massive sums required, Simon Webb reports for Reuters.

Top executives at Shell and ExxonMobil said the same in Houston last week, Ben Lando reports for UPI.

Iraq’s leaders surprised even their many critics by passing three laws last week that marked an important step toward national reconciliation, Dean Yates writes for Reuters. But that is all it represents — a step on the tortuous road to healing divisions among communities still deeply divided and wary of each other despite dramatic cuts in violence.

For more, read Oil Not Part of New Iraq Laws by UPI’s Ben Lando.

Also, Iraq Oil Law Stalled, No End to Impasse in Sight, by Reuters’ Ahmed Rasheed.

Iraq’s Oil Ministry is negotiating with international firms to build a massive refinery in Nasiriyah to help alleviate fuel shortages throughout the country, UPI reports. Iraq currently has a 598,000 barrel per day refining capacity, according to the U.S. Energy Department’s data arm, the Energy Information Administration, but the refineries usually don’t work at maximum when online. The new Nasiriyah refinery would add 300,000 barrels per day capacity.

The commander of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Lt. Gen. Robert Van Antwerp, announced a new way to communicate updates on Iraqi reconstruction efforts – a blog, UPI reports. It can be found here by its slightly off title “Corps e-spondence”

Read Iraq’s editorial pages, the Iraq Press Roundup by UPI’s Hiba Dawood.

Kurds impose limits on where Arabs can live in Iraq’s north, Leila Fadel reports for McClatchy Newspapers.
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Plus:
*Iraq assurances to Lukoil not clear following massive debt forgiveness
*Electricity Ministry warns of even less power following more attacks
*Parliament’s passage of three key bills – analysis and understanding
*Much, much more…

Iraq’s legal framework is still uncertain, Big Oil firms say, though negotiations on oil and gas deals are ongoing and could wrap up by next month.

“Shell along with other major international oil companies are quite interested in future possibilities in the country of Iraq,” Shell Gas and Power Executive Director Linda Cook said Wednesday at an international energy conference in Houston, United Press International’s Ben Lando reports.

“My guess is every international oil company in the world, knowing Iraq is blessed with terrific god-given natural resources, is interested in Iraq,” ExxonMobil Corporate Vice President Daniel Nelson said.

The Iraq-Russia oil relationship is beginning to become less foggy, though not completely clear, now that Russia has agreed to forgive $12 billion in debt racked up by Saddam Hussein. The Financial Times’ Steve Negus reports Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari, visiting Moscow, wouldn’t guarantee Russian giant Lukoil would get the $4B deal for the huge West Qurna oil field, but “they’re in a good position to offer Iraq a high return because they know the field.”

(Editor’s Note: You may be asking yourself ‘why does the new Iraq have to pay off the bills incurred by Saddam Hussein, especially considering those debt collectors – which include much more than Russia – have the blood of the Iraqis, Iranians and Kuwaitis the late dictator killed on their hands?’ Good question.)

Iraq’s Electricity Ministry said Iraqi citizens will see even less electricity as attacks on the infrastructure take their toll, Steve Lannen reports for McClatchy Newspapers. Lannen questions whether a new uptick in violence in the country means the surge success is “short-lived.” The Ministry of Electricity headquarters recently found a bomb on its doorsteps, a clear sign of how insidious the hostility is.

Iraq’s Parliament passed three key laws – the $48B ’08 budget, the law of the provinces and detainee amnesty – previously held up by the same sectarian differences holding up legislation on oil. But the deal making was more accommodation than reconciliation for sustainable progress.

“Passage of the measures represent a significant achievement for the Iraqi Parliament, which on many days could not muster a quorum,” Alissa J. Rubin wrote for The New York Times. “The approach of voting on the three laws together broke the logjam because it allowed every group to boast that they had a win. Leaders of the blocs — Shiite, Sunni and Kurd — realized that while no one of the laws could pass on its own, together, they offered something for each political constituency. So factions would swallow the measures they liked less in order to get the one they wanted.

Although passing the budget and other legislation offers some reprieve to the struggling government of Prime Minister Maliki, they raise several question marks, the ever spot-on Sam Dagher writes for The Christian Science Monitor.

And it comes from the Parliament just in time, as McClatchy Newspapers Baghdad Bureau Chief Leila Fadel explains, the vote was a day after the Speaker of Parliament threatened to disband the assembly and a day before a 5-week recess.

There are still numerous dilemmas to be solved, put off by this vote. The Kurdistan Regional Government received 17 percent of the budget, after national expenditures like defense, though other parties said its population (which the divvying was based on) is closer to 14 percent. This is only for 2008 and the discussion will be contentious for budget ’09 planning.

And the detainees, most of whom are Sunni and held without charge, is an important bone to a minority but powerful faction.

And although the provincial powers law included an date to hold provincial elections by year’s end, there are numerous logistical and political obstacles, despite the dire necessity of holding the vote.

A MUST READ: The Law on the Powers of Governorates Not Organised in a Region: Washington’s “Moderate” Allies Show Some Not-So-Moderate Tendencies, by Reidar Visser at www.historiae.org and research fellow at the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs. An excellent piece of prophecy.

Iraqi Kurdistan or just Kurdistan?, a question explored by the BBC’s Crispin Thorold in a look into the dispute between Iraq’s Kurdish government and the central government.

In its efforts to win support from Iraqis, the U.S. military has made $38 million worth of payments to the families of civilians they have killed since 2004, UPI’s Shaun Waterman reports. Most of the money has been distributed in the areas of the country where Iraq’s Sunnis live, and some Shiite dominated areas in the south have not received any funds.

The White House has proposed new rules to ensure U.S. tax dollars spent on contracts are better audited for fraud – except those contracts where work is done overseas, such as Iraq, The Associated Press reports.

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