Iraq Oil Report

Dr. Mahmoud Othman, a lawmaker with the Kurdistan block in the federal Parliament in Baghdad, has denied statements attributed to him by the press saying that the Kurdistan Regional Government’s oil contracts are illegal, the KRG said in a press statement.

Dr. Othman has requested the Kurdistan Regional Government issue a statement on his behalf clarifying that he was misquoted in his comments on proposed Federal Oil Ministry contracts and existing KRG contracts.

Iraqi Finance Minister Bayan Jabr Solagh said that Iraq’s booming oil wealth holds the key to peace and urged foreign investors to take part in huge projects planned by his war-ravaged country.

With state revenues quadrupled since the US-led invasion of 2003 and amid soaring world oil prices, “from my point of view, money is key to peace, it is the main key,” Solagh said in an interview with AFP.

Finally, after a long five years-plus, there was proof that the occupation of Iraq really did have something or other to do with oil, said Nick Turse with Salon.

Every time we put fuel in our cars, we are probably paying for the war in Iraq - a disturbing thought. The fact is, oil output from Iraq fell to one-third of what it was before the invasion and one-fifth of what it could now be. Fortunately, some Iraqi oil wells are currently being brought back into more regular production and there is talk of the discovery of a new field in the western desert of Iraq, writes Michael Casey for The Irish Times.

The al-Basaer newspaper of The Association of Muslim Scholars said in its Tuesday editorial that efforts by Iraq and the United States are focused on reaching a long-term strategic agreement. The agreement is to be signed between Washington and what the newspaper calls “the Iraqi government,” which al-Basaer says presumably is supposed to represent the will of the Iraqi people.

It said the United States would achieve victory with the passage of the agreement, while the Iraqi government would be a toy to place Iraqi oil legitimately in U.S. hands for decades.

A visit by the prime minister to Iraq last week paved the ground for a new era between Ankara and Baghdad, setting the ground for immense energy cooperation between the two countries as various agreements were reached, notes the Turkish Daily News.

A landmark consensus to secure Turkey’s rights to Iraqi oil, which grants authorization to the Turkish Petroleum Corporation, or TPAO, for oil exploration, drilling and marketing, was reached in a written document signed by the Iraqi oil minister at the last minute.

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