Plus:
*Iraq oil proceeds in first four months of 2008 exceed half of total 2007 oil sales
*Ex-electricity minister bails out Rezko from Chicago jail
*Turkey offers to train Iraqi Army…
*…As it conducts groundbreaking talks with Kurds in Baghdad…
*…And starts bombing PKK in N. Iraq again
*CPJ: Killings of journalists in Iraq ignored by government more than anywhere in world
*Much, much more…
Iraqi and oil company officials are holding talks to boost production in key oil fields, with deals expected next month, Hassan Hafidh reports for Dow Jones Newswires. Shell, BP, ExxonMovil, Chevron, Total, BHP Billiton and Anadarko are in talks which will end May 9, with a final round in June. There are six fields, not five, being looked at for technical support contracts worth $3 billion total, aimed at increasing production by 100,000 barrels per day each in two years, Hafidh reports: Kirkuk (Shell), Rumaila (BP), West Qurna 1 (Chevron/Total), Zubair (Exxon), Missan (Shell/BHP) and Subba/Luhais (Anadarko-led consortium including Vitol and Dome).
Iraq’s Oil Ministry has expressed concern recently that the negotiations are taking too long.
Iraq earned half as much money from oil sales through the first four months of 2008 than all of 2007, according to data from the U.S. State Department, United Press International’s Ben Lando reports.
Iraq’s former electricity minister-turned-fugitive put up $2 million in property equity to get a Chicago political funder accused of state bribes out of jail, UPI reports.
Turkish media is reporting Ankara’s overture to Baghdad to train the Iraqi army, Gareth Jenkins writes for The Jamestown Foundation’s Eurasia Daily Monitor.
Turkish warplanes flew into northern Iraq Friday on a raid of suspected bases of Kurdish rebels, officials said, UPI reports.
This takes place even as groundbreaking meetings between Turkey and Iraq’s Kurdish government, held in Baghdad, the Turkish Daily News reports.
Iraq topped the list made by the Committee to Protect Journalists “the Impunity Index,” a list of countries compiled by the Committee to Protect Journalists where governments have consistently failed to solve journalists’ murders, Voices of Iraq news agency reports.
Federal agencies are not providing adequate or equitable compensation to workers who volunteer for deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan, according to a new report by a House subcommittee, Brittany R. Ballenstedt reports for Government Executive.
Women Tortured by “Mobile Phone Abuse:” Some have even become victims of so-called honour killings after being unwittingly filmed in compromising situations, Amanj Khalil reports for the Institute for War & Peace Reporting.
A rash of patients hospitalised with diarrhoea and vomiting in northern Iraq has raised fears of a cholera outbreak across the region, Azeez Mahmood reports for IWPR. In April, the main hospital in Sulaimaniyah received an average of 25 patients per day with such symptoms – which are very similar to those associated with cholera.
Abdul Rahman Osman Yones, minister of health for the Kurdistan Regional Government, told UPI’s Ben Lando in December that the relatively prosperous region’s citizens don’t have the access to clean water and, come summer, could see a further increase in cholera.
Iraq after the Surge II: The Need for a New Political Strategy, the second in a two-part series by the International Crisis Groiup.
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