Iraq Oil Report

Plus:
*Petrel also says Oil Ministry agrees to payment, ditches Kurdish partner
*Confirmation and details of KRG-South Korea oil investment
*Fields in second oil and gas bidding round discussed
*Kanaqin residents say fight is over oil, future in Iraq
*Alive in Baghdad: Sadr City vs. the Walls
*Food rations to be cut
*Election rules ban some religious images

Iraqi oil and gas deals aren’t just for Big Oil as smaller firms already active in the country are better placed, the head of Petrel Resources said in a statement in which he said the Irish firm has settled payment disputes over a field it is helping develop, Ben Lando reports for United Press International.

“Fears that super-majors would have preferential access to super-giant fields on the basis of no-bid contracts are groundless,” said Petrel Managing Director David Horgan. “There are at least 80 major fields in Iraq, and the advantage is with those players who are knowledgeable and ready to work immediately.”

Petrel in 2005 signed a $197 million contract for design, materials and other services to assist the Iraq State Co. for Oil Projects in developing the Subba and Luhais fields in southern Iraq. Aside from an outstanding bill of $46 million, Petrel faced pressure to let go its partner in the project, the Iraqi Kurd-owned firm Makman Oil & Gas.

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South Korea was granted the lead role in two northern Iraq oil projects and increased interest in six others, UPI’s Ben Lando has confirmed.

The Korean National Oil Corp. has also pledged $2.1 billion in infrastructure projects in Iraq’s Kurdish region as part of the deal, but $1.5 billion will be withheld until oil exports begin.

The state-owned firm will have an 80-percent ownership of the Qush Tappa block PSC and 60-percent ownership of Sangaw South. KNOC was also granted interest in existing production contracts: a 15-percent stake in each of Norbest Limited’s K15, K16 and K17 blocks; a 15-percent interest in block K21; and a 20-percent stake in Sterling Energy Ltd.’s Sangaw North block. It also was given 20 percent more of the Bazian block, of which KNOC is the lead company in a consortium that was granted a 60-percent stake last November.

The agreement was seven months in the making, when a memorandum of understanding was reached between the two sides. In June, contracts for oil stakes were agreed to, as well as an investment project. All of the details were negotiated since then and the deals made official Thursday.

The Iraqi oil ministry held internal discussions this week in a bid to agree on a list of fields to be tendered in its second licensing round, which could be announced as early as mid-October, Iraqi sources told International Oil Daily. So far, 16 fields are on the initial list, which should be finalized in coming weeks.

Iraq’s oil rich town of Khanaqin exposed to ethnic tensions, rival territorial claims similar to Kirkuk, Agence France-Presse reports. In a mirror image of Kirkuk, the Kurdish town of Khanaqin near the border with Iran that holds sizeable oil reserves is being exposed to ethnic tensions and rival territorial claims. Khanaqin has a mixed population of Kurds and Arabs. The Iraqi army has been trying to extend its control over the city, pitting it against peshmerga fighters based there, BBC reports.

National Front for Salvation of Iraq leader vows to fight Islamic Party, Ma’ad Fayad reports for Asharq Alawsat.

Turkish warplanes successfully struck 16 targets in a fresh raid targeting separatist Kurdish rebels in neighboring northern Iraq, a senior Turkish general said Friday, Agence France-Presse reports. Earlier, a local official of Iraq’s autonomous northern Kurdish region also confirmed that Turkish jets had bombed several areas near Qandil Mountains — a major stronghold of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) — along the border with Turkey and Iran.

Not even the elevators work now at Baghdad Medical City, built once as the centre for some of the best medical care, Arkan Hamed and Dahr Jamail report for Inter Press Service. One of the ten elevators still does, and the priority for this is patients who have lost their legs — and there are many of them. The rest, the doctors, patients and students at the four specialised teaching hospitals within the building complex, just take the stairs, sometimes to the 18th floor.

This is in a city that had been given dreams of great development five years back, around the time of the U.S.-led invasion. And much of the corporate-led media in the U.S. and Europe still insists that the situation in Baghdad has “improved”.

Alive in Baghdad: After Siege, Wall Sadr City’s New Oppression

After the failure of many security plans proposed by the Iraqi government and US military strategists, a recent plan, hand-in-hand with the so-called “Surge,” was designed. It was a desperate attempt by the US and Iraqi military forces to control the Sunni-Shia militia. At the suggestion of military leaders, the Iraqi and US governments decided to build walls to separate neighborhoods and to control militias and insurgents from entering or exiting any neighborhood without passing a checkpoint.

Food rations in Iraq will likely decline due to the country’s slumping grain produce and rising food prices worldwide, the Iraqi Trade Ministry says, UPI reports.

The Iraqi Parliament banned the depiction of clerical leaders but not the use of religious symbols in passing the provincial elections law, leaders said Friday, UPI reports. The law includes a provision that allocates 25 percent of the seats to women and a prohibition on the use of mosques, pictures of clerical leaders and government institutions during the campaign season.

A parliamentary committee on displacement and migration demanded the Iraqi government allot US$4 billion in next year’s budget to meet the needs of more than four million internally displaced persons (IDPs) and refugees, the U.N. humanitarian affairs office reports. “We asked the government last year to allocate 3 to 5 percent of the oil revenues in the 2008 budget to cover the needs of IDPs and refugees as they represent a big segment of the Iraqi people and are going through harsh conditions,” Abdul-Khaliq Zankana, a lawmaker and head of parliament’s displacement and migration committee, told IRIN on 24 September. “But unfortunately this call was ignored,” Zankana said.
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