Iraq has approved a $3 billion deal with China to develop the al-Ahdab oil field.
It’s the first Saddam-era oil deal to be honored by the new Iraqi government. It initially was canceled after the 2003 invasion.
A government statement says the Cabinet approved the deal on Tuesday. It was signed last week in China.
Under the contract, China National Petroleum Corp. will develop the field for 20 years, the AP reported. It’s expected to produce up to 25,000 barrels a day after three years, and eventually reach 125,000 bpd.
The field is in Wasit province, about 99 miles southeast of Baghdad.
U.S. policy makers and American consumers in the past few months have been immersed in concerns about soaring oil prices and how to lower them. Fuel prices are also expected to be a focal issue when American voters cast their ballots in the upcoming presidential elections.
But while I can understand Americans’ fears about fuel prices and availability, writes Sarmad Ali for The Wall Street Journal, I have a harder time understanding why Iraqis — with their oases of crude oil reserves and untapped oilfields in the south and the north — have had to put up with high oil prices and severe shortages of gasoline, diesel and cooking gas.
Iraqi security forces took control of Sunni Anbar province from the US military Monday, a milestone in moves to wind down the American presence in a key area that was an insurgent stronghold.
Iraqi troops paraded with flags flying at a formal handover ceremony in the provincial capital Ramadi, once a byword for vicious fighting, though underlying political tensions are yet to be resolved, reports Ian Black for The Guardian.
Security progress after the U.S. troop surge has not been matched by internal political reconciliation. The Iraqi parliament has yet to pass a controversial election law that has been delayed by a dispute over the oil-rich northern province of Kirkuk.
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What? No car-bomb explosions and dozens of dead American soldiers and hundreds of Iraqi citizens? I thought that Iraq was in the middle of a civil war! At least, that’s what Liberal democrats have been saying for years.
I guess that must have been just another lie, huh democrats? We need not be surprised at that, since lying seems to be a requirement for advancement in the democrat party in the US, sad to say.
Kind of interesting: Right before the deal went through we invaded. Now, a week after the deal starts to go back through, our group of glorious leaders decide that it’s time to oust al-Maliki?
Look, you can hang onto your partisan patriotism all you want. That won’t change anything… And it’s why I left that side.
I fought for the Lady in the water, The Flag, and The Constitution.
I DID NOT fight so that Exxon could get a piece of the pie. And I DID NOT fight because America couldn’t invent an electric or natural gas vehicle for the last 30 years.
Oh, and by the way, just because your ‘escalation’ (being of military background I would have assumed that you would have known the difference) of troops during the ‘occupation’ of Iraq (let’s call it what it is, shall we?) helped with the violence (that and paying the warlords and clerics money to tell their sects not to fight us) doesn’t mean it will help with the 3000+ year old mind set of the region to kill each other over religious ideals…
The second we leave it goes right back to chaos. Actually, it will be a lot worse now that Saddam is gone.
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