Brent crude oil prices for January delivery moved closer to the $80 per barrel mark in early Wednesday trading. At least five people died as the result of a suicide bombing Wednesday in Erbil, the capital of the semiautonomous Kurdish north of Iraq. While no group had issued a claim of responsibility, the region has seen an uptick of violence associated with the group calling itself the Islamic State. The attack comes less than a week after a breakthrough interim agreement reached between the Kurdish and Iraqi governments on oil. Baghdad under the terms of the deal pays $500 million to the Kurdish government, which places 150,000 barrels of oil produced from its territory per day at the disposal of the federal […]