Category: Iraq

A worker adjusts the valve of an oil pipe at the West Qurna 1 oilfield in Basra on Nov. 28, 2010. (ATEF HASSAN/Reuters) Iraq has cut the annual budget of its second-most-prolific oil project by nearly 50 percent, as part of a broader effort to reduce oil field development costs in response to a financial crisis.The joint management committee (JMC) of the West Qurna 1 oil field in Basra has decided to cut its 2015 budget from $1.6 billion to $1.1 billion."This year’s budget… had been reduced to $1.3 billion, but what was approved by the joint management committee was $1.1 billion," said Mahdi Malik, the… This content is for registered users. Please login to continue. If you are not a registered user, you may purchase a subscription or sign up for a free trial .

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ANKARA/ARBIL Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdistan region has ramped up independent oil sales since mid-June while cutting allocations to Iraq’s state oil firm SOMO in an escalating dispute over export rights and budget payments. Kurdistan has sold at least 9 million barrels of oil in 11 tankers from the Turkish port of Ceyhan so far in June, according to shipping data and traders, compared to 5 million it allocated to SOMO in early June after which transfers largely stopped. June became the first month of large independent sales since December last year, when Kurdistan agreed a deal with Baghdad to transfer up to 550,000 barrels per day to SOMO in exchange for Baghdad allocating Arbil 17 percent of budget payments. The deal has faced troubles ever since with Baghdad accusing Arbil of allocating smaller-than-agreed amount of oil and Arbil saying Baghdad is paying less than a half of what is due. […]

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Gulf Keystone Petroleum announces new deal for domestic sales and exports from Kurdish oil field. Photo courtesy of Gulf Keystone Petroleum. LONDON, June 29 (UPI) — A new contract with the Kurdish government calls for domestic sales and exports of as much as 40,000 barrels of oil per day, Gulf Keystone Petroleum said. The company, which has headquarters in London, said it was producing more than 40,000 barrels of oil per day from the Shaikan field in the Kurdish north of Iraq. With payment commitments from the Kurdish government in hand, the company said it has a six-month contract for domestic sales and exports between 12,000 and 40,000 bpd by truck across the border to the Turkish coast. The company said it’s already received around $4.9 million from an undisclosed buyer. When noting the lack of payment from the Kurdish government, the company suspended exports by truck through Turkey […]

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KRG Minister of Natural Resources Ashti Hawrami during a speech at the 2015 Sulaimani Forum on March 11, 2015, as Iraqi Oil Minister Adil Abd al-Mahdi looks on. (Source: American University of Iraq – Sulaimani) Iraq’s autonomous Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) is backing away from its troubled oil export and revenue sharing agreement with Baghdad, by allocating much more of its oil production to autonomous sales and seeking to renegotiate its fiscal relationship with Baghdad.KRG leaders have not formally declared an end to the deal, but they notified Kurdish members of the Iraqi Cabinet that they can no longer guarantee the transfers of oil prescribed in the 2015 national budget law. Deputy Pri… This content is for registered users. Please login to continue. If you are not a registered user, you may purchase a subscription or sign up for a free trial .

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An Iraqi official said the Kurds who govern the north of the country have no right to sell their own bonds, opening a new dispute between the Baghdad government and the breakaway region. The Kurdistan Regional Government says it has hired Goldman Sachs International and Deutsche Bank AG to gauge interest in a sale of dollar bonds, and meetings with international investors are scheduled this week. “How can they issue them? Who will guarantee them?” Muneer Mohammed Omran, director general of the central bank’s investor department in Baghdad, said by phone. “They’re not allowed to issue international bonds, this is a federal measure. Only the federal government can do that.” Iraq’s Kurds, who have largely ruled themselves since the early 1990s, have edged closer to financial independence in recent years. Amid disputes with Baghdad over territory and how to share budget revenues, the Kurds have sought to market their […]

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Islamic State Militants Approaching Ramadi On May 17th, Islamic State militants seized the key Iraqi city of Ramadi. The capital of Anbar province, its population of around 800,000 inhabitants makes it second only to Mosul among the cities controlled by IS. The fall of Ramadi was a sharp reversal for the Iraqi government, coming only weeks after the successful capture of Tikrit from Islamic State militants, and cast new doubts on the effectiveness of the Baghdad government’s ability to successfully roll back the Islamic State. Criticism and blame was quick to follow. The governor of Anbar province blamed the central government in Baghdad for the lack of promised reinforcements. Government officials, off the record, blamed the lack of adequate American air support, citing the fact that only about 36 strikes were carried out by U.S. led coalition forces. The Pentagon blamed The Iraqi Army unwillingness to fight noting that […]

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A topping plant in Iraq’s Kurdistan region. (PATRICK OSGOOD/Iraq Oil Report) Along a bumpy dirt track to the west of Erbil, near the town of Gwer, tanker trucks trundle to a tiny, makeshift oil refinery – one of the roughly 150 "topping plants" that now underpin the hopes of foreign oil companies looking to monetize their investments in Kurdistan.The centerpiece is a steel boiler corroded with rust along its welding seams. From one side, a maze of cooling pipes zigzags through a pit of dirty water. A rudimentary distiller separates fuels into six, three-meter-high … This content is for registered users. Please login to continue. If you are not a registered user, you may purchase a subscription or sign up for a free trial .

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DUBAI, June 22 Iraq hopes to meet investors by the end of July to present plans for a $5 billion bond issue, the country’s finance minister Hoshiyar Zebari told Reuters on Monday. The government has hired JP Morgan, Citibank and Deutsche Bank to arrange its first debt sale in nine years, to cover a budget deficit caused by low oil prices and its conflict with Islamic militants. Iraqi officials met with the three banks and credit rating agencies Fitch Ratings and Moody’s Investors Service on June 16, Zebari said by telephone. "We completed a very successful round of due diligence with the three banks and with the ratings agencies in Istanbul, and I think they are on board," he said. "We will start our roadshow I think end of July, or early August at the latest, and then we will issue them. So everything is on track." On April […]

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KRG President Masoud Barzani gives an interview in Erbil on June 2, 2013. (AZAD LASHKARI/Reuters) Just two months from the end of Kurdistan President Massoud Barzani’s term, politicians are scrambling to avoid a governance crisis and leadership vacuum.The president is legally barred from a third term, and Barzani was already granted a controversial two-year extension to his second term, which is about to expire. But political leaders remain deadlocked over fundamental questions of how to elect the next president and balance the presidency’s powers with those of the Cabinet and Parliament… This content is for registered users. Please login to continue. If you are not a registered user, you may purchase a subscription or sign up for a free trial .

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It is a time of good news for the Kurds, a people more accustomed to tragedy than to triumph. Just last week in Turkey, a political party rooted in the struggle for Kurdish rights vaulted over the 10% threshold for parliamentary representation, giving the Kurds their biggest say ever in Turkish politics. Days later, allied Kurdish fighters in Syria seized a crucial border crossing from Islamic State, thus uniting Kurdish areas that now stretch from Iraq halfway to the Mediterranean Sea. In Iraq, the Kurds repelled an assault by Islamic State last year, and their budding autonomous government in northern Iraq has taken advantage of the collapse of the Iraqi army to seize full control of the disputed northern city of Kirkuk—often dubbed the “Kurdish Jerusalem” because of its historic significance—and the all-important oil fields nearby. Amid an imploding Middle East ravaged by religious hatreds, the Kurds are providing […]

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