Exxon preparing to drill in Kurdistan A drilling rig towers above the Pirmam exploration block, where ExxonMobil is days away from spudding its first well in Iraq’s autonomous Kurdistan region.The start of drilling will cheer Kurdish leaders, who saw Exxon’s entry to Kurdistan – over the objections of federal oil officials in Baghdad – as an implicit endorsement of both the Kurdistan Regional Government’s (KRG) independent oil sector and its wider ambitions for almost total autonomy within the federal structure of the Iraqi …