Category: Iraq

Iraq will double exports within weeks from its northern Kirkuk oil fields and continue boosting output further south amid a global market glut that’s pushed prices to their lowest level in more than five and a half years. Crude shipments will rise to 300,000 barrels a day from the Kirkuk oil hub, where authorities are also upgrading pipelines between fields, Fouad Hussein, a member of the Kirkuk provincial council’s oil and gas committee, said yesterday in a phone interview. “There is a need to install a new pipeline network” to increase exports from the area, Hussein said. Kirkuk, which currently exports about 150,000 barrels a day, will boost shipments to 250,000 barrels a day and then to 300,000 “in the coming few weeks,” he said. Iraq, holder of the world’s fifth-largest crude reserves, is rebuilding its energy industry after decades of wars and economic sanctions. The country exported 2.94 […]

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A soldier stands guard over the Baiji refinery. (AYMAN OGHANNA/Iraq Oil Report) Militants from the so-called Islamic State (IS) group attempted surprise offensives on key, hard-won locations in northern Iraq, to no avail.Federal government forces repelled attacks on the Baiji refinery and the Samarra dam, while Kurdish forces weathered offensives targeting Kirkuk and the city of Gwer, near Erbil.The Baiji attack began on Sunday morning, when IS militants sent a car laden with explosives to the outer ring of security at the Baiji refinery, according to a senior offi…

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Winston Churchill, at the time Britain’s colonial secretary, is front and centre at the 1921 Cairo conference that set Iraq’s borders. Also in the picture are the Arabist Gertrude Bell (second from left, second row) and Lawrence of Arabia (fourth from right, second row). Getty Images Related Topics: Oil Winston Churchill understood the significance of the black stuff seeping to the surface in the Kurdish plains of Mesopotamia when he included the region within Iraq as the British forged the country in the 1920s. In doing so, Churchill, the colonial secretary at the time, set in train almost a century of bickering between the Iraqi government and its Kurdish enclave over the area’s estimated 45 billion barrels of crude. While their latest dispute was temporarily resolved last month to help finance the struggle against ISIL, the accord has not addressed differences between administrations in Baghdad and Erbil that include […]

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Iraq , OPEC’s second-largest producer, raised the selling price for February shipments to Asia of its main Basrah Light crude by 30 cents a barrel, after Saudi Arabia boosted its pricing to the region. Iraq set Basrah Light at a discount of $3.70 a barrel to the average of Middle Eastern benchmark Oman and Dubai grades, the country’s Oil Marketing Co. said yesterday in an e-mailed statement. The announcement followed increases Jan. 5 by Saudi Arabia, the biggest producer in the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, for its main grades to Asia. Iran raised its February prices to Asia last week. The Basrah Light discount for February, while narrower than the January discount of $4 a barrel, was greater than for any other month since at least August 2003, when Bloomberg began compiling data. “It’s in line with the Saudi move,” Robin Mills, the head of consulting at Manaar […]

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A still image from video taken by a U.S. Coast Guard HC-144 Ocean Sentry aircraft shows the oil tanker United Kalavyrta approaching Galveston, Texas July 25, 2014. It carries around 1 million barrels of crude loaded by the KRG, which Baghdad has sued for possession of in U.S. court. (REUTERS/US Coast Guard handout) The Iraqi Oil Ministry has won a procedural legal victory in its long-standing disputes with the autonomous Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) over oil export rights.The Southern District Court in Texas on Wednesday denied the KRG’s motion to dismiss a case that is preventing the delivery of 1 million barrels of oil to customers in the U.S. The decision forestalls Kurdistan’s attempt to establish a high-profile precedent that might enhance its ability to export oil independently, and keeps…

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Winston Churchill understood the significance of the black stuff seeping to the surface in the Kurdish plains of Mesopotamia when he included the region within Iraq as the British forged the nation in the 1920s. In doing so, Churchill, the colonial secretary at the time, set in train almost a century of bickering between the Iraqi government and its Kurdish enclave over the area’s estimated 45 billion barrels of crude. While their latest dispute was temporarily resolved last month to help finance the struggle against Islamic State, the accord has not addressed differences between administrations in Baghdad and Erbil that include the future of Kirkuk, northern Iraq’s main oil hub. The Iraqi government started pumping crude from Kirkuk via Kurdish pipes that bypass militant-held territory to Turkey , Al-Mada Press reported Jan. 1. “The need to finance military operations has brought together the Iraqi government and the Kurds,” said […]

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The final welded section of the KRG’s Khurmala – Feyshkabour pipeline lies by trenching immediately south of oil storage tanks at DNO International’s pumping station, 3km from the Turkey border, in November 2013. It is now installed and on Jan. 1, 2014, began exporting Kirkuk oil on behalf of the NOC. (PATRICK OSGOOD/Iraq Oil Report) of Iraq Oil Report Recommend Sign Up to see what your friends recommend. Iraq’s federal North Oil Company (NOC) has begun exporting Kirkuk crude for the first time since militants led by the so-called Islamic State (IS) bombed the pipeline to Turkey nearly a year ago. The fields that still remain under the control of the state-run North Oil Company (NOC) – which since June has lost smaller assets to the IS group and larger fields to Kurdish appropriation – are sending 150,000 barrels per day (bpd) north via a pipeline network controlled by […]

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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 2015 draft budget received a second reading in Parliament Wednesday, although concerns over the falling price of oil threaten to delay legislative progress."The most difficult issue now standing in the way of approving the budget is the deterioration of oil prices," said Tariq Sadiq, a Kurdish member of the federal Parliament’s Oil and Energy Committee. "There is a proposal to return the budget draft to the Cabinet."Several other MPs and Parliament staffers confirmed they discus…

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Companies working in the Kurdish north of Iraq say they’ve reached milestones in terms of production and export deliveries. UPI/Gary C. Caskey LONDON, Jan. 5 (UPI) — Companies operating in the Kurdish north of Iraq said Monday they reached a milestone in terms of production and shipments for exports through Turkey. Gulf Keystone Petroleum, a British company, announced with its Hungarian partner, MOL, it was now producing oil from seven wells in the Shaikan development in the Kurdish north of Iraq and expected an eighth to come online later this month. As of Dec. 29, the companies said production was around 40,000 barrels of oil per day, with a record number of 354 trucks crossing the Turkish border with a combined 58,000 barrels of Shaikan crude oil for export sale . "No question, reaching [the] production level is a significant milestone in the project," MOL Executive Vice President Alexander […]

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Members of the Iraqi military guard an oil platform on Sept. 21, 2014, in the Basra Gulf. (HAIDAR MOHAMMED ALI/AFP/Getty Images) Iraq reported record monthly exports for December, though revenues dropped to a three-year low due to the falling price of oil.Exports for 2014 averaged 2.517 million barrels per day (bpd), according to the initial readout provided by Oil Ministry spokesperson Assem Jihad – the highest annualized level since 1989, when exports hit 2.595 million bpd, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.Iraqi crude was sold in December for an average price of $57 per barrel, Jihad sai…

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