Daily Archive for March 11th, 2008

Int’l audit of Iraq’s oil revenues show more to be done to prevent smuggling…

Published
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Iraq Oil Report
on March 11, 2008
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Plus:
*Iraq Oil Minister confirms crude for cash, int’l agreement may prevent it
*Fire stops Kirkuk flow to Turkey
*Ministry confirms China oil talks
*Oil vs. Electricity ministries
*Oil ready for Jordan, ambassador blames scared contractors
*KBR keeps taking hits
*Much, much more…

Iraq is improving its anti-theft operations guarding oil and fuel from the black market, but an international audit highlights more work to be done, Ben Lando reports for United Press International.
A report by international auditors tasked with keeping an eye on Iraqi oil revenues said “progress has been slow” in installing a metering system throughout the oil sector.

The International Advisory and Monitoring Board report cited improvements in stemming the backdoor flow of oil and fuel, including meters at export terminals and decreasing the fuel subsidy.

The IAMB includes the Iraqi government, Arab Fund for Economic and Social Development, International Monetary Fund, United Nations and World Bank and has since 2003 audited the Development Fund for Iraq — an account of oil and gas revenue and Saddam-era assets held at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

Iraq’s oil minister confirms crude in lieu of cash is a major consideration for upcoming contracts, despite U.N. roadblocks, UPI reports. High oil prices and slowly increasing oil production could increase the value of the barter.

A fire in Iraq’s northern pipeline system has stopped oil exports from the Kirkuk oil field to Turkey, UPI reports.

The Ministry of Oil says it has revived talks with the China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) over a deal to develop the Ahdab oil field, Alaa Tamimi reports for Azzaman. A ministry source, who did not wish to reveal his name, said the talks have reached “an important stage” and should be finalized in April. UPI reported last week the governor of Iraq’s Wasit province says he renegotiated a Saddam-era oil deal with the China National Petroleum Corp.

A delegation of high level officials from Iraqi State Oil Marketing Organization (SOMO) is set to arrive in Turkey late March to meet Turkish officials to discuss operation of oil fields in Iraq and Turkey, as well as construction of new pipelines and refineries, The New Anatolian reports.

Iraq’s Ministries of Oil and Electricity are at loggerheads; While they bicker, Iraqis seethe, Glenn Zorpette writes in the International Herald Tribune. The executive editor of I.E.E.E. Spectrum, the magazine of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, writes a true tale – though perhaps weighted in favor of the Electricity Ministry and the U.S. reconstruction effort, which could be considered mutually exclusive backing – of the lack of joint operations between two of the most important Iraqi ministries.

Iraq’s ambassador to Jordan said security is stopping discounted Iraqi oil from being delivered and said an Iraq-Jordan pipeline is being studied, UPI reports.

The speaker of the Iraqi parliament said in a press conference, in Irbil on Monday, that the Kurdistan region has the right to sign oil contracts with foreign companies, the Voices of Iraq news agency reports. The quotes appear to be taken out of context however, which would be surprising for the typically spot-on VOI. Especially when one considers his call for Arab solidarity in and around Iraq, as Voice of America reports, which may buck the trend of Kurdish autonomy in the oil sector. And he paints a trying picture for the Parliament and their many roadblocks to overcome, The Associated Press reports.

Security, Society, Politics & Economics

Scores of women rallied outside a Baghdad hotel demanding an end to violence and equal social status with men as part of the observations of International Women’s Day, Agence France-Presse reports. “Stop neglecting women. Stop killing women. Stop creating widows,” read a large banner that the women, from various ethnic and religious backgrounds, held at the Babylon Hotel in Baghdad’s central Karada neighbourhood.

The brother-in-law of Iraqi president Jalal Talabani has apologised after threatening to kill a journalist who he said insulted his late father in an article, the latest in wave of official intimidation of the Kurdish press, Mariwan Hama-Saeed reports for the Institute for War & Peace Reporting. Halo Ibrahim Ahmed, the son of the late Ibrahim Ahmed, a famous 20th century Kurdish politician, wrote a letter to journalist Nabaz Goran on February 28 saying, “[I will] kill you, [Goran] even if I have one day left of my life.” The outburst, which has received substantial coverage in the Kurdish press, was the latest in a wave of recent threats and attacks against journalists in Iraqi Kurdistan.

A shortage of staff, equipment, and medical supplies is crippling the local health-care system, Zaineb Naji reports for the Institute for War & Peace Reporting. Five years have passed since the fall of Saddam Hussein’s regime, and the health sector continues to deteriorate daily - eating away at the dignity of people.

The Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) has launched a feasibility study into setting up a local bourse, which could act independently of Baghdad, the Middle East Economic Digest reports.“There are still questions over whether to tie the exchange to Baghdad or keep it separate,” says a KRG official. “It will force companies in Kurdistan to be a lot more transparent than they are at the moment. It would be a major cultural shift, but there is a lot of enthusiasm for it.”

Inside Iraqi Politics, a new series by The Long War Journal.

Part 4: Reconciliation via wealth distribution - The fourth installment begins examination of legislative progress, specifically the status of key legislation that distributes the country’s wealth, including the 2008 budget and the oil law.

Part 5: Sunnis’ and states’ rights - The fifth installment reviews further pieces of legislation considered important for stability and reconciliation: the Unified Retirement Law, de-Baathification reform, the General Amnesty Law, the referendum on Kirkuk, the Provincial Powers Act and the Provincial Elections Law.

John Affleck reports for The Associated Press on his first experience in Baghdad.

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

America in Iraq

Injuries sustained in Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom have increased not only in severity, but in number, making it more of a challenge to care for the severely wounded, according to a new report in the Journal of Trauma, Injury, Infection and Critical Care. The time period for group 1 is twice as long as that of group 2, but the number of deaths is the same, which means the deaths per month doubled. However, the CFRs are unchanged. Arguably, this is because of the improvements in combat casualty care through experience, training, research, and implementation of effective clinical practice guidelines.

Army Report on Mental Health of Soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq, produced by the fifth Mental Health Advisory Team, discusses the mental health and morale of soldiers deployed in Afghanistan and Iraq in fall, 2007.

U.S. soldiers at a military base in Iraq were provided with treated but untested wastewater for nearly two years by KBR, the giant government contractor, and may have suffered health problems as a result, according to a report released yesterday by the Pentagon’s inspector general, Dana Hedgpeth reports for The Washington Post.

Here’s the entire Inspector General’s report.

KBR hasn’t fared too well lately. Last week Farah Stockman of the Boston Globe broke the story of KBR skirting U.S. taxes by creating shell companies based in a computer file in a Cayman Islands office building.

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Iraq’s multi-phased oil contract process moves forward…

Published
by
Iraq Oil Report
on March 11, 2008
in Uncategorized
. 0 Comments

Plus:
*Oil Minister Shahristani bridges ties with Turkey, dismisses Kurdish deals again
*Shahristani said high court can decide who is right
*IMF official: transparency improved, all oil funds still unaccounted for
*Talabani in Turkey, denounces PKK, tells Ankara it must talk to Barzanis
*Unofficial meeting set in Baghdad
*Iraq Press Roundup
*Much more…

With or without a new oil law, Iraq will sign deals with international oil companies aimed at boosting production, the top Oil Ministry spokesman said.

“The Ministry of Oil had to make a move, with or without passing the oil law,” Assem Jihad told United Press International’s Ben Lando in a phone interview from Baghdad, “and set up the suitable plans to increase the oil production.”

“In the near future,” Jihad added, the names of companies that qualify to sign longer-term development deals will be announced. The ministry is moving forward with an ad-hoc plan to increase outside investment in the oil sector as a draft oil law intended to set post-Saddam guidelines for governing the oil sector remains stuck in Parliament.

Iraq’s oil minister reaffirmed ties with Turkey and rejected Iraqi Kurdistan’s oil deals in visits to Ankara over the weekend, UPI reports.Turkey, which wants to further develop Iraq oil and gas to ship to and through its territory, is also sparring with Iraq’s Kurds over rebels in the northern Iraq mountains.

Shahristani said he’s willing to let Iraq’s high court decide the Baghdad-Irbil dispute, The Associated Press reports. “The (high) federal court can review any dispute and we don’t have any doubt that the only one who has the authority to sign contracts is the federal government in Baghdad according to the constitution,” he said.

The KRG argues the Constitution has its back. For the two sides to come to an agreement, one will have to eat a tremendous amount of crow, or both a lot.

Such a case could be an historic one for Iraq, — and sparks could fly at the outcome — setting precedent for the state of federalism.

A U.N. watchdog agency cannot say whether all of Iraq’s oil money was properly used but significant progress has been made to improve transparency, an International Monetary Fund official said, Lesley Wroughton reports for Reuters. Bert Keuppens, one of two IMF officials on the United Nation’s International Monitoring and Advisory Board (IAMB), said more than $100 billion has flowed into an Iraq oil fund since it was launched in 2003.

This follows Friday’s request by two key U.S. Senators that the GAO look into how Iraq saves and spends its oil revenues, and the extent of Iraqi and U.S. resources put into reconstruction, Ben Lando reported for UPI and Iraq Oil Report broke Friday.

Fixing Iraq, and a refinery: Helping restore a 1930s oil facility will take local planning and teamwork, Tony Perry reports for the Los Angeles Times.
The ragged oil refinery in a barren corner of Anbar province looks more like something out of a post-apocalyptic Mel Gibson movie than the centerpiece of an ambitious energy project. The plant, known as K-3, was built by the British in the 1930s, allowed to slip into disrepair for three decades under Saddam Hussein, then bombed by the Americans in 1991 and 2003.

Companies which strike oil deals with the Kurdish region in Iraq may be helping to undermine the process of Iraqi national conciliation, argue Rob Foulkes and Daniel Litvin of Critical Resource.

Ray Hunt, CEO of Dallas-based Hunt Oil, one of the first and the largest U.S. firm to sign a deal with Iraq’s Kurds, and lied about discussing it with the State Department first, says higher price oil his here to stay, Elizabeth Souder reports for The Dallas Morning News.

Security, Society & Politics

A Turkish delegation will soon travel to Iraq to meet with Massoud Barzani’s nephew Nerchivan Barzani, the prime minister of the KRG, probably around March 14. However, in a sign of continuing Turkish caution, the meeting will be unofficial and will be held not in the Kurdish north but in Baghdad, Gareth Jenkins reports in The Jamestown Foundation’s Eurasia Daily Monitory. At a meeting with Turkish journalists on March 8, Talabani vigorously condemned the PKK. He said that the organization had just two choices, either to renounce its armed struggle or to leave Iraq. The Turkish media interpreted his remarks as suggesting that, in the wake of last month’s Turkish incursion, both the KRG and the central government in Baghdad will apply pressure on the PKK to declare a ceasefire. However, Talabani also made it clear that Iraqi Kurdish cooperation in eradicating the PKK would come with a political price.

“If you really want to render the PKK in northern Iraq ineffective, then, as a priority, you should address the KRG and its head Barzani,” said Talabani.

Arab tribes in Kirkuk on Sunday struck a deal with US troops to form a Sahwa (awakening) council in northern Iraqi volatile district, a security source said, Voices of Iraq reports. If this is true, it will only increase the violence pending on the powder keg question over oil-rich Kirkuk. Now the enemy of the Kurdish prerogative for the disputed territory will be armed and ready, officially.

Iraq’s children have been more gravely affected by the U.S. occupation than any other segment of the population, Dahr Jamail and Ahmed Ali report for Inter Press Service. The United Nations estimated that half a million Iraqi children died during more than 12 years of economic sanctions that preceded the U.S. invasion of March 2003, primarily as a result of malnutrition and disease.

Debating Devolution in Iraq, Reidar Visser writes in the Middle East Report Online about the politicization of the new Iraq. Reidar Visser is a research fellow at the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs and editor of the Iraq website www.historiae.org.

After an acrimonious investigation that spanned four years, the Senate Intelligence Committee is preparing to release a detailed critique of the Bush administration’s claims in the buildup to war with Iraq, congressional officials said, Greg Miller reports for the Los Angeles Times. The long-delayed document catalogs dozens of prewar assertions by President Bush and other administration officials that proved to be wildly inaccurate about Iraq’s alleged stockpiles of banned weapons and pursuit of nuclear arms.

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