Iraq Oil Report

Plus:
*John McCain and the confusion over war and oil
*Children at War — two looks by War News Radio and Alive in Baghdad
*Turkey, Iraq’s Kurds and the PKK
*Iraq Press Roundup
*Much, Much more…

Iraq’s Oil Ministry has extended the deadline for companies to submit plans to design and supply the equipment for pipelines to and from Iran. The April 24 deadline for bids was moved to May 18, the ministry announced on its Web site Tuesday, Ben Lando reports for United Press International. The State Company for Oil Projects, a division of the ministry, is inviting international oil companies to offer bids detailing the design and engineering study and supplying of all equipment and materials except the pipelines itself.

The project, which has been in the discussion phase for more than a year, is to ship Iraqi crude to Iran and in a separate line import refined products. Both pipelines would transport via the Shatt al-Arab waterway, the body of water leading the Tigris and Euphrates into the Persian Gulf and delineating the southern Iraq-Iran border.

John McCain, likely Republican Party candidate for president, has been unable to play down his new campaign platform/gaffe connecting U.S. military action in the Middle East with the need for oil in the United States.

Here’s the original campaign stump speech:

And here’s an attempt to clarify (from MSNBC’s First Read:

After the plane had landed, McCain himself tried to clarify his remarks, at first agreeing with his press secretary: “I was talking about that we had fought the first Gulf War for several reasons. One of them was Saddam Hussein’s invasion and that’s just not something that’s acceptable…but also we didn’t want them to have control over the oil, and that part of the world is critical to us because of our dependency on foreign oil. And it’s more important than in any other part of the world.”

McCain then summarized his point by basically restating his remarks from earlier in the day: “We will have independency of foreign oil and we will not have to have that as a factor in any conflict that we have to engage in. …I want us to remove our dependency on foreign oil for national security reasons. That’s what I was saying. And that’s all I mean.”

But then when specifically asked by an Associated Press reporter if, when he made the statement, he was “thinking about the first Gulf War,” he said no.

“No, I was thinking about- it’s not hard to- we will not,” McCain stumbled. “By eliminating our dependency on foreign oil, we will not have to have our national security threatened by a cut off of that oil. Because we will be dependent, because we won’t be dependent, we will no longer be dependent on foreign oil. That’s what my remarks were.”

Basra’s port of Khour al-Zubeir received an oil tanker and a cargo ship on Sunday, the public relations and media director at the State Company for Iraqi Ports said, Voices of Iraq reports.

The Committee to Protect Journalists urged KRG President Masoud Barzani on Sunday to publicly investigate a spate of violent attacks against the press, end official interference and harassment of journalists, and support press legislation that conforms to international standards of free expression.

Here’s the CPJ report, The Other Iraq.

Alive in Baghdad: Among Iraq’s Children, Orphans Suffer Most:
Soure: www.aliveinbaghdad.org

Turkey unleashed an air assault on a suspected PKK meeting in the northern Iraq mountains, which the government says may have killed or injured hundreds, including the leadership, the Turkish Daily News reports. Meanwhile, Kurdistan Regional Government President Massoud Barzani is urging the separatist group to stop attacking Turkey. This follows meetings between Turkish and KRG leadership in Baghdad last week.

There is growing dissent among Kurds affiliated with the PKK (and its sister organizations) and those who are not that Washington giving intelligence to Turkey to conduct such attacks is an attack on Kurds in general. Today’s Zaman reports a member of PJAK, the wing of PKK aimed at freeing Iranian Kurdistan (and coincidently not named a terrorist organization by Washington), condemned the recent attack and said its members may attack U.S. troops.

Its traditional wooden-balconied Shanasheel houses in ruins, other buildings crumbling and muddied streets reeking of rubbish, Al-Batawin neighbourhood in the centre of Baghdad is an abject picture of just how far the rot has set in to the once-proud Iraqi capital, Bryan Pearson reports for Agence France-Presse.

Head of Baghdad Municipality Council Me’ain al-Kadami has indicated his department’s efforts to rise pumping of potable water in Baghdad to five m cubic meters per day, Al-Sabaah reports.

The Iraq Press Roundup, a look into the editorials of Iraq’s newspapers, by UPI’s Hiba Dawood.

Amidst unemployment and impoverishment, Iraqis now face a cutting down of their monthly food ration – much of it already eaten away by official corruption, Ali al-Fadhily and Dahr Jamail report for Inter Press Service. From the beginning of this year, the rations delivered were reduced from 10 items to five. “We used the PDS as counter-propaganda against Saddam Hussein’s regime before the U.S. occupation of Iraq began in 2003,” Fadhil Jawad of the Dawa Party led by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki told IPS in Baghdad. “But then we found it necessary to maintain basic support for Iraqi people under occupation. We blamed Saddam for feeding Iraqis like animals with simple rations of food — that we fail to provide now.”

Children at War: the latest edition of War News Radio looks at the youth amidst conflict — an Iraqi couple who use the Internet to sustain their relationship; a look at No More Victims, an organization that’s bringing wounded Iraqi children to the U.S. for treatment; and two Iraqi girls who underwent rhinoplasty for very different reasons.

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Plus:
*Iraqis react to Congress’ bluster that Iraq hasn’t paid enough for the war and occupation
*Jordon stops Iraq crude shipments because of violence
*Turkey, KRG rapprochement
*Iraqi Shia leaders in Iran for militia talks
*Iraq After The Surge for Sunnis
*Much more…

A Senate panel has agreed unanimously to block the Defense Department from funding Iraq reconstruction projects worth more than $2 million and to begin to force Baghdad to cover the costs of training and equipping its security forces, Anne Flaherty reports for The Associated Press. The provision, included in a 2009 defense policy bill approved this week by the Senate Armed Services Committee, comes as Democrats draft a similar provision within separate legislation that would cover this year’s war spending.

Iraqis are fuming at suggestions being floated by lawmakers that Baghdad should start paying a share of the war’s costs by providing cheap fuel to the U.S. military, Liz Sly reports in a MUST READ for the Chicago Tribune.

“America has hardly even begun to repay its debt to Iraq,” said Abdul Basit, the head of Iraq’s Supreme Board of Audit, an independent body that oversees Iraqi government spending. “This is an immoral request because we didn’t ask them to come to Iraq, and before they came in 2003 we didn’t have all these needs.” … The criticisms in Congress that Iraq isn’t paying its share are “a bit overplayed,” said Stuart Bowen, the inspector general, in a telephone interview.

“It’s an evolving process, but the Iraqi government has now taken over the majority of the funding,” he said. “In 2007 the U.S. share dropped below 50 percent, and it will drop even more dramatically in 2008.”

Iraqis would be forced to pay for U.S. efforts in their country directly or via loans from the United States if any of at least five similar pieces of legislation introduced on Capitol Hill in April is approved, Ben Lando reports for United Press International. “What this resolution does is put the burden on the Iraqi people to say, ‘no more free lunches from the American public,’” said Rep. Ron Klein, D-Fla.”It’s not some benefactor from the outside who just keeps writing more and more checks every month.”

“There is simply no reason for the U.S. to continue paying for the cost of the salaries for the Sons of Iraq, for the training and equipping of the Iraqi security forces, and the fuel we use in Iraq given this boon in oil revenue,” Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, said after a new report by the U.S. Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction highlighted Iraq’s rising oil exports amid rising oil prices but lacking capacity to spend the funds on needed capital projects. Collins, along with Sens. Ben Nelson, D-Neb., and Evan Bayh, D-Ind., have co-authored one of the at least five similar pieces of legislation. “As the Iraqi government is reaping an unanticipated windfall,” she added, “the Iraqis should be picking up the tab for their own reconstruction and stabilization costs.”

This and previous SIGIR reports noted more Iraqi money has been spent on reconstruction than American tax dollars, and of the reconstruction expenditures by the United States — of both American and Iraqi funds — billions of dollars have been misspent or gone missing altogether, Ben Lando reports for UPI.

Jordan stopped importing Iraqi crude oil and fuel, due to “bad security conditions on the international highway between the two countries,” the Kuwait News Agency reports.

A delegation of senior Shiite leaders arrived in Iran Thursday to speak with top military officials there about the backing of so-called special groups, UPI reports.
A Kurdistan Regional Government delegation led by Prime Minister Nechirvan Barzani today in Baghdad met with a delegation from the Republic of Turkey headed by Mr Ahmet Davutoğlu, the senior advisor to the Turkish Prime Minister; Mr Murat Özçelik, the Special Coordinator for Iraqi Affairs at the Turkish Foreign Ministry; and Mr Derya Kanbay, Turkey’s Ambassador in Baghdad, a KRG statement said. This is a major development which may affect the debate over Article 140 and oil-rich Kirkuk, as well as the stalled hydrocarbon law and the KRG’s dozens of oil deals.

But it also is an incisive event in the relations between Turks and Kurds that could help define the future of the region (see: Invisible Nation: How the Kurds’ Quest for Statehood Is Shaping Iraq and the Middle East by the BBC’s Quil Lawrence.

On April 23 the Turkish Council of State ordered former Interior Minister Mehmet Agar to stand trial for allegedly “forming a criminal organization” in the dirty war against the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) during the 1990s, a period most Turks refer to as the “Susurluk” era (Turkish Daily News, April 23; Sabah, April 23; Today’s Zaman, April 22). It will be the first time a former government minister has faced charges related to one of the darkest chapters in recent Turkish history, the repercussions of which still haunt Turkey today, Gareth Jenkins writes in The Jamestown Foundation’s Terrorism Monitor.

The U.N. envoy for children in armed conflict zones called on the Iraqi government to target more reconstruction funds to schools and basic child services, UPI reports.

Confronting the Sadrists: The Issue of State and Militia in Iraq, Fadhil Ali reports for Terrorism Monitor.

Falluja’s struggle after invasion, by Dahr Jamail in Aljazeera. Jamail reported from Iraq, including Falluja, and is author of Beyond the Green Zone: Dispatches from an Unembedded Journalist in Occupied Iraq

Whistle-blowers regaled a Senate Democratic panel with stories of rampant waste, fraud, looting, intimidation and other abuses — including the operation of a prostitution ring — by private contractors in Iraq, Terry Kivlan reports for Congress Daily.

Iraq after the Surge I: The New Sunni Landscape, the first of a new two-part report by the International Crisis Group.

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Plus:
*DPM Barham Salih: Iraq has more oil than Saudi Arabia
*Australian patrol accidently cuts southern power lines
*In the Line of Fire, latest by War Radio News
*Iraq Press Roundup
*More…

Iraq’s Oil Ministry has extended to May 18 the bid deadline for the Akkas gas field project, aimed at developing the gas field for export to Syria and Europe, United Press International’s Ben Lando reports. Shell, Total and Edison are the largest companies to have made overtures to develop the Akkas gas field, which will be overseen by the State Company for Oil Projects.

Iraq may have oil reserves of 350 billion barrels, Deputy Prime Minister Barham Salih said, a massive figure that is triple the country’s proven reserves and which even exceeds the oil in Saudi Arabia, Dean Yates reports for Reuters.
Iraq’s official reserves are at 115 billion barrels of oil, but the country is massively UNDER-explored.

An Australian army patrol has emerged unscathed after their armoured vehicle struck power lines in southern Iraq, Ben Knight reports for Australia’s ABC News. The Bushmaster vehicle was on a routine patrol in Nasiriya in southern Iraq last night when it struck low-hanging power lines.

Iraq: Regional Perspectives and U.S. Policy, a new report from the Congressional Research Service, published by the Federation of American Scientists.

In The Line Of Fire, the latest series from War News Radio: An ongoing initiative to re-integrate former soldiers into Iraq’s new military; soldiers on active duty who are also actively against the war; how U.S. service members in Iraq are using Facebook to keep in touch; the history of the Iraqi army; and, an Iraqi policeman trying to enforce the law in a lawless city.

Poverty Gets the Survivors, Maki al-Nazzal and Dahr Jamail report for Inter Press Service. More than a million Iraqis were lucky enough to flee into Syria. But in this relatively safe haven, there is no getting away from poverty.

American and Iraqi forces in Baghdad have been targeted with 251 improvised bombs this month — nearly double the monthly average — as fighting in and around Sadr City intensified, Jim Michaels reports for USA Today.

Read Iraq’s editorial pages: the Iraq Press Roundup by UPI’s Hiba Dawood.

The U.S. is struggling to hand Iraq control of many of its reconstruction projects after spending tens of billions of dollars on them since the 2003 invasion, a report said Monday, The Associated Press reports. The AP article gives the impression its mostly Iraq’s fault for the transfer of control problems, when in reality it’s a combination of Iraq institutional incapability and the poor U.S. planning for both short and long term.

Read the report by the U.S. Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, Transfering Reconstruction Projects To The Government Of Iraq: Some Progress Made But Further Improvements Needed To Avoid Waste.

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Iraqis would be forced to pay for U.S. efforts in their country directly or via loans from the United States if any of at least five similar pieces of legislation introduced on Capitol Hill this month is approved.

This comes as Americans deal with — and politicians respond to — an unpopular and expensive war, a sinking economy and record gas prices, Ben Lando reports for United Press International.

“Whether or not you support the war strategy,” said Rep. Ron Klein, D-Fla., “the Iraqi government needs to pay for its fair share after five years and $600 billion in American taxpayer expenses.”

Klein’s resolution would require U.S. funds for Iraq reconstruction and security forces training, as well as the cost of fuel for U.S. operations, to be repaid by Iraq as a loan.

“What this resolution does is put the burden on the Iraqi people to say, ‘no more free lunches from the American public,’” Klein said. “It’s not some benefactor from the outside who just keeps writing more and more checks every month.” …

“This is just our notice to these guys we’re not going to carry the whole load anymore,” said Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-Calif. He’s proposed in the past requiring Iraq to repay all U.S. expenses since the invasion. “Morally I think they should, but that’s a whole other debate.” …

The U.S. auditor of Iraq reconstruction efforts said in a January report more Iraqi funds have been allocated for reconstruction than U.S. funds through 2007. While the United States was initially tasked with spending the Iraqi money — a reconstruction effort criticized for being ill-planned and seeing few results — responsibility shifted to the new Iraqi government, which has had a harder time, regularly spending only a small percentage of its multibillion-dollar capital budget. …

Click Here to read the entire story.

The Revival of Arbil, by Maad Fayad in Asharq Alawsat. The population of Arbil and the rest of the Kurds who live in Iraqi Kurdistan prefer to use the historical name ‘Lir’ in reference to the Kurdish region’s capital, Arbil, as an homage to the history of the region, which predates back to over 6,000 years. This history bears testimony to the fact that the Kurds, as a nation, settled in northern Mesopotamia thousands of years ago and that they are not foreigners to this region.

Graffiti inside this city’s ancient hilltop citadel quickly spells out the tension between Kirkuk’s three main ethnic groups – Kurds, Arabs, and Turkomen, Sam Dagher reports for The Christian Science Monitor. On one wall, an eagle descends on a two-headed serpent meant to symbolize enemies of the Kurdish nation. Next to it, the word “Arab” is erased and replaced with an etched “Kurdish” in a slogan that once read: “Kirkuk is an Arab city.” Another slogan reads: “Kirkuk is Turkmen.”

Kirkuk has been the object of a bitter struggle over the past five years among Iraq’s competing ethnic and sectarian groups. And now Arab, Kurd, and Turkmen factions seem to be digging in, anticipating that tensions may erupt in an area that is the center of northern Iraq’s oil industry ahead of a promised referendum on the fate of Kirkuk Province, officially still called Tamim, its previous Baath Party-era name.

The Iraqi government is about to make a major mistake: excluding Shi’ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr from the political process, Mohamad Bazzi writes for The Washington Times. (Bazzi covered Iraq as Newsday’s Middle East bureau chief and is the Edward R. Murrow Press Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.) On April 13, the Iraqi government approved a draft law barring any political party with a militia from participating in provincial elections set for October. While Sheik al-Sadr and his Mahdi Army were not specifically mentioned in the legislation, they are the intended target. Other Iraqi parties operate militias, but they have been largely absorbed into the Iraqi army or security forces. The bill is now before the Iraqi parliament.

It was the bombing of a revered Shiite shrine here that pushed Iraq to the brink of civil war, bloodshed that has left tens of thousands dead and this ancient city in ruins, Bradley Brooks reports for The Associated Press. But reconstruction of the famed mosque amid the rubble filling this city is under way, once bitter Shiite and Sunni enemies jointly man checkpoints and locals hope tourists will return again to see the shrine and help save the economy.

A record 63 percent of U.S. citizens think it was a mistake sending troops to fight in Iraq, the latest USA Today/Gallup Poll said Thursday, UPI reports.

The Iraq Press Roundup by UPI’s Hiba Dawood.

Top officials of the Veterans Affairs and Defense departments faced harsh questioning from the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee on Wednesday about recently leaked e-mails written by the VA’s head of mental health revealing that nearly 1,000 U.S. soldiers per month have attempted suicide after returning from service in Iraq and Afghanistan, Rafael Enrique Valero reports for Government Executive.

Lt. Col. Billy Hall, one of the most senior officers to be killed in the Iraq war, was laid to rest yesterday at Arlington National Cemetery. It’s hard to escape the conclusion that the Pentagon doesn’t want you to know that, Dana Milbank writes for The Washington Post. The family of 38-year-old Hall, who leaves behind two young daughters and two stepsons, gave their permission for the media to cover his Arlington burial — a decision many grieving families make so that the nation will learn about their loved ones’ sacrifice. But the military had other ideas, and they arranged the Marine’s burial yesterday so that no sound, and few images, would make it into the public domain.

The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee wants information from defense contractors such as KBR and Blackwater Worldwide on their use of off-shore subsidiaries to avoid taxes, Dan Friedman reports for Government Executive.

A group of U.S. senators on Thursday will call on the Bush administration to use its leverage with OPEC to increase oil supplies or risk Congress holding up multimillion dollar arms deals with Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and other members of the oil producing group, of which Iraq was a founding member, Reuters reports.

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Iraqi Oil Minister Hussain Al-Shahristani said Tuesday the country will likely drop oil service contracts with foreign companies if they don’t have their proposals finalized by a June deadline and will move forward with the work on its own, Dow Jones Newswires reports. “June is already a bit late… We may drop them if they aren’t signed soon ( after June),” Shahristani told journalists here after an industry conference. He didn’t specify whether he was referring to all contracts or those targeting specific fields that individual companies are vying for.

Kuwait has agreed to review the question of reducing Iraq’s compensation payments imposed after the 1991 Gulf War, Iraqi government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh said on Tuesday, Ulf Laessing and Rania El Gamal report for Reuters. But Kuwaiti Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammed Al-Salem Al-Sabah said any change in the compensation regime must be decided by the U.N. Security Council in New York.

Even as American and Iraqi troops are fighting to establish control of the Sadr City section of this capital, the Iraqi government’s program to restore basic services like electricity, sewage and trash collection is lagging, jeopardizing the effort to win over the area’s wary residents, Michael R. Gordon reports for The New York Times.

Iraqi culture under fire, CNN’s Ralitsa Vassileva speaks to journalist and author Hadani Ditmars about the war in Iraq and Iraqi culture, especially women’s rights in Iraq and the Baghdad Symphony.

Lawmakers told State and Defense department leaders that their lack of farsighted interagency coordination is blurring jurisdictions in countries like Iraq and Afghanistan. But Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and Joints Chiefs Staff Chairman Adm. Michael G. Mullen defended their approach of letting Defense take the lead on foreign military training programs that have traditionally been funded by State, Rafael Enrique Valero reports for Government Executive.

The surgeon generals of the Army, Navy and Air Force told senators the optimal tour in Afghanistan and Iraq to reduce combat stress should be six to nine months with 18 months at home, far shorter than the cut in tours from 15 to 12 months ordered by President Bush last week, Bob Brewin reports for Government Executive.

The U.S. Army maintains its policy of mandatory tour extensions despite pledges from the Defense Department last year to stop the practice, records show, UPI reports.

The Foreign Ministers of Iraq (a Kurd), Turkey and the U.S. Secretary of State met for half an hour in the sidelines of a conference of Iraq’s neighbors held in Kuwait, PUKMedia reports.

In December 2006, in an effort to build a national consensus on a “new way forward in Iraq,” the Iraq Study Group painted itself as a portrait of bipartisan chumminess, with all political hackery checked at the door, Daniel Libit reports for The Politico. Sixteen months later, seven of the 10 ISG members are backing presidential candidates with radically different views about how to proceed in Iraq.

In the Iraqi government’s fight to subdue the Shiite militia of Moktada al-Sadr in the southern city of Basra, perhaps nothing reveals the complexities of the Iraq conflict more starkly than this: Iran and the United States find themselves on the same side, James Glanz and Alissa J. Rubin report for the International Herald Tribune.

The Iraq Press Roundup by UPI’s Hiba Dawood.

The Association of Muslims Scholars’ Al Basaer Newspaper said Gen. Kevin Bergner, special assistant to the president and senior director for Iraq, admitted in a briefing March 26 in Baghdad that Iran had a major influence in Basra and northeast cities of Iraq, and called upon Iran to intervene in order to end the violence among the Shiite Mahdi Army militia, Iraqi forces and other Shiite militias related to the Shiite Dawa and Supreme Iraqi Islamic Council parties.

The paper said five years after the occupation of Iraq and the loss of thousands of soldiers and millions of dollars, the United States is asking for the help of a neighboring country that is, according to the White House, an enemy or at least a threat to U.S. interests.

Errant Iraqi police and criminal elements within their ranks are in the cross-hairs of U.S. forces in a move to protect improved security and sectarian reconciliation in Muqdadiya and its surrounding villages, Richard Tomkins reports for UPI. At the same time, closer scrutiny is being paid to the Sons of Iraq neighborhood watch volunteer groups to increase discipline and ensure Iraqi government rules are followed to the letter.

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