Plus:
*Baiji-Baghdad fuel line repairs start
*Oil Ministry extends Akkas bid tender
*SOMO taking bids for fuel oil export
*WashingtonPost.com/Newsweek on the Iraq oil question
*Alive in Baghdad: Baghdad, City of Widows
*Much more…

Iraq’s Prime Minister has demoted the head of the South Oil Company and the head of two SOC divisions, Hassan Hafidh reports for Dow Jones Newswires. Kifah Nauman, Abdul Jabbar Lauby’s deputy, will replace him. … Ali Hussein Khudier replaced Abdul Kareem Jasem at South Gas Co. and Amer Abdul Jabbar has taken over from Kareem Jabor al-Saaedy at Iraqi Oil Tankers Co. … “The reason behind his replacement is purely political,” Mustafa Al Ani, a senior analyst at the Dubai-based think-tank, Gulf Research Center, told Dow Jones. “He was a vocal opponent of the proposed new oil law, which is based on decentralization and division of the oil sector in Iraq.”

Iraq Oil Report is told Lauby has refused an alternate post of “adviser” to the Oil Ministry.

Aref Mohammed has more for Reuters.

The removal of Lauby is likely part of an across the board firing of the Basra workforce in the oil and gas and transportation sectors. Iraq Oil Report cannot confirm reports that any worker with more than 25 years of service will be removed in an attempt to tackle corruption. Meanwhile, as Iraq’s most experienced and knowledgeable workers are fired, Iraq is signing deals with international companies to do a number of service projects, including building the largest port in the Gulf in Al Faw. It’s also likely the workers brought in to replace those who are fired will be members of the Dawa Party and Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, thus shoring up control and numbers before provincial elections are held.

It comes as Iraq’s oil workers union has penned a letter to shareholders of Chevron and ExxonMobil asking them to support Iraq civil society and back off the oil law.

Repair teams started work on major oil pipelines connecting Iraq’s largest refinery to Baghdad on Sunday, in a bid to help meet a domestic supply shortfall, a British official overseeing the project said, Tim Cocks reports for Reuters. “This group of pipelines connects north and south Iraq and will help distribute crude oil to refineries and oil products such as kerosene and diesel to people,” Brigadier Carew Wilkes, energy operations director for U.S.-led forces in Iraq, said.

Iraq’s Oil Ministry has for the third time pushed back the deadline to submit tenders to design and procure materials for the development of the Akkas Gas Field. It is now June 4.

The ministry also announced a tender to purchase fuel oil from the Khor Al Zubair terminal.

Iraq and the Oil: An interview with United Press International and Iraq Oil Report editor Ben Lando in WashingtonPost.com/Newsweek’s Global Power Barometer.

The Minister of Electricity of Iraq, H.E. Dr. Kareem Waheed Hassan, accompanied by Mr. Esmat Akbd, the General Consol of the Iraqi Embassy in the UAE, has visited the Masaood John Brown service center in Jebel Ali Free Zone to inspect repairs on equipment that the company is carrying out on behalf of the Iraqi Ministry of Electricity, Al Bawaba reports.

One of the Kirkuk options, as described by Joost Hiltermann of the International Crisis Group in an interview with Today’s Zaman.

“In a potential package deal, the Kurdistan Regional Government [KRG] in Iraq would gain the rights to develop its own oil fields. In exchange they would not incorporate Kirkuk into the Kurdistan region. And it may become a stand-alone region with a power sharing arrangement,” he elaborated.

As part of that deal, he said, the Iraqi Kurdish administration would restrain the PKK’s freedom to maneuver: “If Turkey then also agrees to an amnesty for lower and mid-level officials [of the PKK] and lets refugees from the Makhmour camp return safely to Turkey, the KRG in exchange will absorb the senior levels of the PKK — they will be disarmed, of course, and no longer politically active.”

Baghdad, City of Widows: This memorial day, as citizens of the United States, and perhaps elsewhere, are remembering the fallen soldiers of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as previous conflicts, Alive in Baghdad asks you to remember the civilian fallen as well. It’s been estimated that 1.3 million women have been widowed in Iraq due to war, ranging from the Iran-Iraq war to the most recent conflict which is still going on today.

Iraqi politicians squabbled Monday over a provincial elections law and warned that differences over the bill are likely to delay for at least a month the crucial vote planned for this fall that could rearrange Iraq’s political map, The Associated Press reports.

Sometime soon, a group of American corporate executives and military leaders will quietly sit down and divide Iraq into three parts. Their meeting will not have anything to do with Iraq’s national sovereignty, but instead will involve slicing up billions of dollars in work for the defense contractors that support the American military’s presence in the country, James Risen reports for The New York Times. For the first time since the war began, the largest single Pentagon contract in Iraq is being divided among three companies, ending the monopoly held by KBR, the Houston-based corporation that has been accused of wasteful spending and mismanagement and of exploiting its political ties to Vice President Dick Cheney.

Iran’s role in helping broker a cease-fire in Baghdad’s Sadr City may be the first sign that it is acting to fulfill recent promises to stop arming Iraq’s militias and help stem their attacks, by Scott Peterson and Howard LaFranchi in The Christian Science Monitor. Iran’s intervention comes as previously undisclosed details are emerging of a secret meeting between Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, other senior Iraqi officials, and the commander of Iran’s Qods Force, Brig. Gen. Qassem Soleimani, in April, after clashes with Sadr’s Mahdi Army in Basra. In that meeting, General Soleimani “was deeply concerned” and “promised to stop arming groups in Iraq and to ensure that groups halt activities against US forces,” according to a description given by a US official to the Monitor.

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