Iraq Oil Report

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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