Category: Iraq

A senior Kurdish military commander and eight Kurdish fighters have been killed in clashes with Islamic State militants in a battle outside the city of Kirkuk, the Associated Press said. Photo: Getty. Islamic State militants launched their biggest offensive yet outside Kurdish-controlled Kirkuk and tried to penetrate the city itself, part of a spate of brazen attacks by the extremist group against Kurdish forces across Iraq on Friday. A senior Kurdish commander, Brig. Gen. Sherko Fatih, was among at least six Kurdish forces killed in the surprise attack just after midnight outside the northern Iraqi city, officials said. As fighting raged outside the city, fighters from Islamic State, also known as ISIS, tried to break into the Kirkuk Palace Hotel after detonating a car bomb in front of the hotel, a rare incursion into the city center, officials said. Kirkuk Gov. Najmaldin Karim said Kurdish forces and local police […]

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Iraq has the fifth largest proved crude oil reserves in the world, and it is the second-largest crude oil producer in OPEC. Iraq was the second-largest crude oil producer in the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) in 2014, and it holds the world’s fifth largest proved crude oil reserves after Venezuela , Saudi Arabia , Canada , and Iran . Most of Iraq’s major known fields are producing or in development, though much of its known hydrocarbon resources have not been fully exploited. All of Iraq’s known oil fields are onshore and the largest fields in the south have relatively low extraction costs owing to uncomplicated geology, multiple supergiant fields, fields that are typically located in relatively unpopulated areas with flat terrain, and the close proximity to coastal ports. 1 Iraq is re-developing its oil and natural gas reserves after years of sanctions and wars. Iraq’s crude […]

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KIRKUK, Iraq (Reuters) – Islamic State insurgents seized a small crude oil station near the northern Iraqi city Kirkuk where 15 employees were working, security and oil officials said on Saturday. Two officials from the state-run North Oil Co confirmed the militants seized a crude oil separation unit in Khabbaz and said 15 oil workers were missing after the company lost contact with them. "We received a call from one of the workers saying dozens of Daesh fighters were surrounding the facility and asking workers to leave the premises. We lost contact and now the workers might be taken hostage," an engineer from the North Oil Co told Reuters, using a derogatory acronym for Islamic State. The radical jihadist movement seized at least four small oilfields when it overran large areas of northern Iraq last summer, and began selling crude oil and gasoline to finance their operations. Islamic State […]

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Members of Parliament gather to vote on Iraq’s new government in Baghdad on Sept. 8, 2014. (THAIER AL-SUDANI/Reuters) Iraq’s Parliament passed the 2015 budget Thursday, including spending reductions and provisions governing the relationship between Baghdad and the autonomous Kurdistan region. The new budget also leaves key questions unanswered. For example, it is not clear how Iraq will find additional financing if the price of oil remains so low; how leaders in Baghdad and Erbil will reconcile competing interpretations of their past and future obligations; or how southern provinces will respond to the disap…

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BAGHDAD — Some of the men were shot on their doorsteps, their bodies left crumpled in the streets. Others were lined up, led to a field and killed there. Their relatives, ordered to stay in their homes, heard the gunfire. At least 72 people from a majority Sunni village in eastern Iraq were methodically singled out for slaughter this week, according to witnesses and local Sunni leaders, who said the victims were killed by Shiite militiamen who were supporting Iraqi security forces. A spokesman for Iraq ’s prime minister said Thursday that the government was investigating the claims. Some local security officials in Diyala Province have asserted the victims were militants killed in battle by the security forces, denying that sectarian executions had occurred. But witness accounts suggest that is what happened in the village of Barwanah starting on Monday. Several survivors described seeing a column of troops drive […]

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Iraqi Oil Minister Adil Abd al-Mahdi (L) meets with Kurdistan Prime Minister Nechirvan Barzani in Erbil on Nov. 13, 2014. (STRINGER/Reuters) Recommend 898 people recommend this. Sign Up to see what your friends recommend. A cooperative oil export and revenue sharing agreement reached by Iraq’s federal government and Kurdistan region is in danger, with the two sides failing to meet each other’s expectations. The dispute over oil exports nearly derailed the passage of the 2015 budget, which was approved by Parliament on Thursday, as MPs demanded language be amended to explicitly forbid the KRG from exporting oil independently of the federal government. Much remains to be reconciled, however, as the disappoin…

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BAGHDAD (Reuters) – At least 12 civilians were killed on Friday morning when two bombs exploded in central Baghdad, security sources said. An initial blast in the Bab al-Sharqi district was followed by a car bomb, the sources said. At least 30 people were also wounded in the attack. The area is home to a large market and lies across the Tigris river from the Green Zone, which houses most government buildings. Bombings are frequent in Baghdad, where Sunni insurgents from Islamic State, which controls large swathes of territory in Iraq’s north and west, regularly target Shi’ite neighborhoods with car bombs. At least 21 people were killed on Thursday in bombings at five separate locations and a shooting on the outskirts of Baghdad. (Reporting By Stephen Kalin; Editing by Crispian Balmer )

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An Iraqi Airways plane lands at Baghdad International Airport Jan.27, 2015. Airlines from at least three countries suspended flights to Baghdad on Tuesday after bullets hit an airplane operated by Fly Dubai as it was landing on Jan. 26. Company officials said Iraqi Airways and Iran’s Caspian Airlines were operating flights to Baghdad on a normal schedule. (THAIER AL-SUDANI/Reuters) One child was injured in a surface-to-air machine gun shooting of a Fly Dubai flight as it descended toward Baghdad International Airport (BIAP) late Jan. 26, the Transportation Ministry said on Tuesday. The acting head of the Iraqi Civil Aviation Authority (ICAA) denied the incident altogether both Monday and Tuesday, despite the confirmation by the Transportation Ministry, to which ICAA belongs, and BIAP officials and workers. "Yesterday evening, an aircraft of Fly Dubai was hit while …

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More Kurdish oil will probably head to the U.S. even as a tanker carrying 1 million barrels of disputed crude returns to the Mediterranean Sea six months and $60 million less valuable after anchoring off Texas . The United Kalavryta is heading to Gibraltar, Kyriakos Maragoudakis, operations manager at Piraeus, Greece-based Marine Management Services M.C. , the ship’s operator, said by e-mail Tuesday. The tanker didn’t unload, he said. The Kurdistan Regional Government plans to send more cargoes to the U.S., the semi-autonomous region’s lawyer said in a letter to the judge hearing the dispute between the KRG and Iraq over ownership of the cargo. The U.S. Gulf Coast can process more than twice as much oil as Iraq produces, with refineries that have invested in equipment to handle a wide range of crudes, making the region an attractive destination for cargoes. For now, this test case is a […]

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(Bloomberg) — The battle for customers among OPEC members that helped trigger oil’s collapse is about to escalate. Iraqi crude production is climbing from a 35-year high as it adds growing Kurdish supplies to its exports, while southern oilfields remain unscathed by Islamic State militants. Finding buyers for the new output means offering more attractive terms than rivals in the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, say Citigroup Inc., DNB ASA and Barclays Plc. Oil’s biggest slump in six years gained momentum in October as a wave of discounts by Middle Eastern producers signaled OPEC members were intent on defending market share against booming shale output from the U.S. The price of Saudi crude for Asian buyers was cut to the lowest in at least 14 years last month, a move followed by Iraq, Kuwait and Iran. “This price war is not just between Saudi Arabia and the U.S., it’s […]

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