Category: Iraq

Russian energy company Lukoil said Wednesday it’s fulfilled its contractual obligations for the West Qurna-2 field in Iraq and production is above 200,000 bpd. "The West-Qurna-2 project is developing at a fast pace, and production is going up," the company said in a statement . Lukoil, which serves as operator at the oil field, said it’s maintained a steady level of production of at least 120,000 barrels per day for the last 90 days. Currently, daily oil production is above 200,000 bpd, the company said. "As of today, the project has reached another milestone by paving the way for LUKOIL to receive contractual remunerations," the Lukoil statement said. First oil was produced from West Qurna-2, located in southern Iraq, in March. Lukoil, Russia’s largest private oil company, signed a contract revision last week to build two 75-mile long pipelines and associated infrastructure. The system will link the oil field […]

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Washington does not support any export or sale of oil from Iraq without consent from the federal government in Baghdad, a State Department spokeswoman said. Two cargo vessels have left the Turkish sea port of Ceyhan loaded with oil from the Kurdish north of Iraq. United Leadership left port in May and is parked off the coast of Morocco. United Emblem set sail early this week and is positioned north of the island of Crete, Greece. U.S. State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said during a press briefing Tuesday the U.S. government has long sided with Baghdad on the sale or export of Iraqi crude oil. "We don’t support the export or sale of oil, absent the appropriate approval of the federal Iraqi government," she said . "This [export] exposes those who are undergoing this effort to potentially serious legal risks." The semiautonomous Kurdistan Regional Government said it’s acting within […]

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Iraq’s southern oil export facilities, currently its only export outlet, were secure, with shipments now running at around 2.6 million barrels per day, Oil Minister Abdul Kareem Luaibi said on Wednesday. An al Qaeda splinter group seized control of the northern Iraqi city of Mosul on Tuesday, putting security forces to flight in a spectacular show of strength against the Shi’ite-led Baghdad government. "All our exports now are from the Basra terminal in the south – and it’s a very, very safe area," Luaibi told reporters ahead of an OPEC meeting. Iraq’s northern export pipeline, which connects to a Turkish terminal, has been out of action since March after a bomb attack. Luaibi also said there was better chance of agreement between the central government and the Kurdish region due to the situation in Mosul. (Reporting by Peg Mackey and Georgina Prodhan in Vienna, […]

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Iraq’s southern oil export facilities, currently its only export outlet, were secure, with shipments now running at around 2.6 million barrels per day, Oil Minister Abdul Kareem Luaibi said on Wednesday. An al Qaeda splinter group seized control of the northern Iraqi city of Mosul on Tuesday, putting security forces to flight in a spectacular show of strength against the Shi’ite-led Baghdad government. "All our exports now are from the Basra terminal in the south – and it’s a very, very safe area," Luaibi told reporters ahead of an OPEC meeting. Iraq’s northern export pipeline, which connects to a Turkish terminal, has been out of action since March after a bomb attack. Luaibi also said there was better chance of agreement between the central government and the Kurdish region due to the situation in Mosul. (Reporting by Peg Mackey and Georgina Prodhan in Vienna, […]

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Hitting Bottom: The Maliki Scorecard in Iraq Iraq is on the edge of civil war, and its election does not seem to offer any clear prospect of producing national unity or an effective leader. As a result, there is natural focus on Iraq’s growing violence and political divisions, but this is only part of the story. The Burke Chair has already addressed these issue in depth in a book length report called Iraq in Crisis which is available on the CSIS web site at http://csis.org/files/publication/Iraq%20Book_21_April_2014%20(reduced%20size).pdf .   Violence and politics, however, are only part of Iraq’s story. Anyone seeking to understand the outcome of the Iraqi election and the role Prime Minister Maliki has played to date also needs to understand the trends in governance and economics, and just how serious the other challenges Iraq faces really are. The Burke Chair has developed a summary report on these challenges […]

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Maritime shipping data show an oil tanker, United Emblem, left the Turkish port of Ceyhan loaded with a cargo of oil taken from the Kurdish north of Iraq. Data show United Emblem , a Greek-flagged oil tanker, arrived Sunday at the Turkish seaport and left just over 24 hours later. It’s the second confirmed shipment of Kurdish oil since United Leadership left the Turkish port loaded with more than 1 million barrels in late May. As of Tuesday, United Emblem was headed west and was south of the Turkish peninsula of Teke. United Leadership is parked off the coast of Morocco. Authorities there told the vessel to leave its territorial waters earlier this week. Oil from the Kurdish north of Iraq was sent to storage tanks in Ceyhan before exports began in May. The central government in Baghdad has complained to international arbiters the exports are a violation of […]

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The Iraqi government declared a state of emergency Tuesday as al Qaeda-linked militants from ISIS, or the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham, violently seized control of Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city. Via The Foreign Bureau, WSJ’s global news update. BAGHDAD—Islamist insurgents seized control of Iraq’s second-largest city on Tuesday in a brazen military operation that underscored the weakness of the central government across vast swaths of the country. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki declared a nationwide "state of maximum preparedness" after government forces fled Mosul in disarray following four days of fighting. He asked parliament to declare a state of emergency. But he didn’t say whether military forces were mobilizing to retake the city, 220 miles north of the capital, Baghdad. By nightfall, the militants were still expanding their territorial conquests. Local security forces said the fighters had taken over territory in the neighboring province of Kirkuk to the east […]

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The Iraqi government declared a state of emergency Tuesday as al Qaeda-linked militants from ISIS, or the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham, violently seized control of Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city. Via The Foreign Bureau, WSJ’s global news update. BAGHDAD—Islamist insurgents seized control of Iraq’s second-largest city on Tuesday in a brazen military operation that underscored the weakness of the central government across vast swaths of the country. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki declared a nationwide "state of maximum preparedness" after government forces fled Mosul in disarray following four days of fighting. He asked parliament to declare a state of emergency. But he didn’t say whether military forces were mobilizing to retake the city, 220 miles north of the capital, Baghdad. By nightfall, the militants were still expanding their territorial conquests. Local security forces said the fighters had taken over territory in the neighboring province of Kirkuk to the east […]

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Sunni militants spilling over the border from Syria on Tuesday seized control of the northern city of Mosul, Iraq’s second largest, in the most stunning success yet in a rapidly widening insurgency that threatens to drag the region into war. Having consolidated control over Sunni-dominated Nineveh Province, armed gunmen were heading on the main road to Baghdad, Iraqi officials said, and had already taken over parts of Salahuddin Province. Thousands of civilians fled south toward Baghdad and east toward the autonomous region of Kurdistan, where security is maintained by a fiercely loyal army, the pesh merga. The Iraqi Army apparently crumbled in the face of the militant assault, as soldiers dropped their weapons, shed their uniforms for civilian clothes and blended in with the fleeing masses. The militants freed thousands of prisoners and took over military bases, police stations, banks and provincial headquarters, before raising the black […]

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The infantryman and his colleagues were already worn down after six months of fighting militants in western Iraq, men flush with weapons and zeal. Army commanders had no answer for the daily deadly ambushes and no broader strategy for prevailing in the longer war. The final straw was the death of a friend, killed two weeks ago by a sniper’s bullet. The infantryman, Bashar al-Halbousi, deserted, making the same choice as hundreds of other soldiers in his battalion, he said. “The state is weak,” Mr. Halbousi said. “This will be an endless battle.” After months of grinding conflict against a resurgent militant movement, the Iraqi Army is having its power blunted by a rise in desertions, turning the tide of the war and fragmenting an institution, trained and funded by the United States, that some hoped would provide Iraqis a common sense of citizenship. In a nation […]

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