Iraq Oil Report

Plus:
*President Talabani meets with Lukoil executives
*OMV to start drilling two wells next year in KRG block
*Tigris, Euphrates levels affecting gas liquification
*Crescent Petroleum’s Majid Jafar Q&A
*Much, much more…

After several months of negotiations and pressure from the Iraqi government, BP and Exxon Mobil Corp. have finally submitted proposals to the Iraqi oil ministry on technical services contracts to boost production at Iraq’s prized oil fields, sources close to the Iraqi ministry said, Hassan Hafidh reports for Dow Jones Newswires. Other oil majors, which have been negotiating similar deals with Baghdad, haven’t yet submitted their plans, but they would follow suit, according to these sources.

The Iraqi President, Jalal Talabani, met with a delegation from the Lukoil oil company in Baghdad, PUKMedia.com reports. President Talabani expressed Iraq’s willing to reinforce bilateral relations with the Russian federation in all aspects particularly the oil aspect since it is considered as the main gate toward promoting these relations.

Russia forgave nearly $12 billion in debt earlier this year which was likely part of the West Qurna oil field bargaining strategy.

Austrian oil and gas group OMV said on Tuesday it planned to drill two wells next year in its northern Iraq exploration blocks, Reuters reports.

A number of gas liquefaction projects in northern Basra have stopped recently because of the low levels of water in the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, the director of the water resources department in the southern province said, Voices of Iraq reports.

An interview with Crescent Petroleum exec and Dana Gas board member Majid Jafar by United Press International’s Ben Lando.

The Stockholm Conference and Conditionality in Iraq, by Reidar Visser at the Iraq-focused site historiae.org. Visser is also research fellow at the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs and an author of southern Iraq evolution.

As international experts prepare for the 29 May conference in Stockholm on development aid and debt relief for Iraq under the Iraq Compact scheme, the picture of US policy-making in this area is depressing. Despite a declared intention of pursuing a unifying policy, through its peculiar choice of Iraqi allies the Bush administration is in fact contributing to fragmentation. Whereas the formula of a tripartite federal state based on “Shiite”, “Sunni” and “Kurdish” regions enjoys only limited popular support in Iraq outside Kurdistan, it is being pursued very determinedly by Washington’s Iraqi partners: the two biggest Kurdish parties (KDP and PUK) and the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI) – the only Shiite party that supports a federal arrangement based on sectarian identities, and also historically the Shiite party with the closest and most long-standing ties to Iran. Even Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, who used to criticise the notion of strong federal regions, may have become increasingly dependent on ISCI and the Kurds after his latest moves against the Sadrists. …

Only a week ago, developments in Basra underlined just how much opposition to the Maliki line can be found outside the Green Zone, even in core Shiite areas. A vote by the Basra provincial council – reportedly by consensus, and thus conceivably even involving some “defections” from the local ISCI branch – protested against the central government’s decision to remove the head of the Southern Oil Company. The initiative was headed by Fadila, an Iraqi Shiite Islamist party which enjoys considerable sympathy in other Arab countries thanks not least to its outspoken criticism of Iran, but which symptomatically has received scant attention from the US. …

Stockholm could be an opportunity for a fresh discussion of to what extent the Maliki government’s line is truly representative of Iraqi public opinion and really constitutes a sound basis for a new political system in Iraq. Arab states could try to find a constructive position between full boycott and unconditional surrender to the ISCI-Kurdish blueprint for the new Iraq. More likely, however, the conference will play out as a polite gathering of diplomats that will fail to ask critical questions about the overall direction of Iraqi politics, thereby perpetuating the West’s abandonment of the Iraqi people.

Iraq’s main Sunni Arab political bloc said on Wednesday it had suspended talks to rejoin the Shi’ite-led government after a disagreement with Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki over a cabinet post, Wisan Mohammed reports for Reuters.

At least 30 percent of all U.S. combat troops returning from Iraq and Afghanistan suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder, Pentagon officials said, UPI reports.
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