Critics from within

The Iraqi Oil Ministry's plan to boost oil and gas production via eight contracts up for bidding by international oil companies has run into a major roadblock: the head of the South Oil Co., Iraq's largest producing state entity, has gone public with opposition.

Fayad al-Nema, director general of the SOC, told Ahmed Rasheed of Reuters top officials in Iraq's oil production industry worry the contracts being offered for large scale foreign investment in Iraq for the first time in three decades are bad for Iraqis.