Iraq Oil Report

* Repairs following storms in south and northern bomb successful

Plus:
*Maliki reportedly asks British for energy help
*Parliamentarians displeased with Electricity Minister
*Iraq preps record budget for 2009
*Cholera epidemic spreads
*Reidar Visser on the Democratic Party’s Iraq plan

Iraq has resumed oil exports following a storm that shut in the southern port of Basra and the completion of repairs to the bomb-damaged northern pipeline that carries crude from the northern Kirkuk fields to the Turkish Mediterranean port of Ceyhan, Eric Watkins reports for Oil & Gas Journal.

Iraq asked Britain on Thursday for technical support in its oil industry, Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki’s office said, Agence France-Press reports. In talks with the visiting minister of state for energy, Malcolm Wicks, the premier also sought closer bilateral economic ties, including greater British investment, a statement said.

The Unified Iraqi Coalition on Thursday demanded Electricity Minister Karim Wahied to resign after his failure in running the ministry, a lawmaker from the UIC said, Voices of Iraq reports. “The UIC demanded the electricity ministry to resign during a meeting held today to save his face because his inability to provide electricity during his post,” Abd Ali Lafta said. Karim Wahied is one of the UIC minister in al-Maliki’s government.

Iraq’s Finance Ministry on Wednesday said that the country’s 2009 budget will stand at a record at $78.88 billion, The Associated Press reports. Ministry spokesman Adnan Abdul-Rahman said the budget was based on an average oil price of $80 a barrel next year. Abdul-Rahman added that $60.26 billion will go to operational expenses, while $18.62 billion will go to investment and improvements in infrastructure. The budget is expected to be the largest ever submitted.

There is growing frustration in Washington that Iraq is not spending more of its own money to stabilize and rebuild the country, Bill Rogers reports for Voice of America. High oil prices have earned Baghdad billions of dollars, and some in the U.S. Congress say Iraq should be using more of that money to pay for its own reconstruction.

The looming crisis: Displacement and security in Iraq, a new report from the Brookings Institution, which says that lost in discussions of the military surge, the pace of troop drawdowns, and political benchmarks are millions of displaced Iraqi women, children, and men. Their plight is both a humanitarian tragedy and a strategic crisis that is not being addressed.

During the last 24 hours 35 new cholera have been reported, bringing the total confirmed cases to 161, according to the U.N. Office of Humanitarian Affairs.

The big problem with Democrats when it comes to policy on Iraq is that they either focus exclusively on withdrawal (and thereby close their eyes entirely to the mistakes of the Bush administration in shaping Iraq’s political system between 2003 and 2008), or they engage with questions regarding choice of political system but do so in a manner that is even less in harmony with Iraqi traditions than Republican policy is, writes Reidar Visser of the Iraq-focused website historiae.org. (Visser is also a research fellow at the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs.)

The Iraq Press Roundup by United Press International’s Alaa Majeed.

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