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Voices from Baghdad

Ten years ago Christine Spolar reported on the Iraq war. Last month she returned to find her old colleagues and friends living in fear, and a city traumatised by spiralling violence A car bomb attack in Baghdad on January 15 ©Ayman Oghanna for The New York Times A car bomb attack in Baghdad on January 15 The emails from Baghdad popped up in the middle of my London workday. Friends, one-time drivers and translators, who had helped me navigate war-torn Iraq a decade ago, were responding to my New Year’s hello – and their words left me blinking, hard, at the computer. “I won’t tell you how miserable life in Baghdad is these days. You’re watching the news and you know. It’s worse than ever,” wrote Nadeem Majeed, an engineer who once worked as a translator for the Chicago Tribune and now manages a Nissan distributorship. His district was […]

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Bombings, shootings kill 22 in Iraq

dozen bombings in central Iraq and two shootings in the north killed 22 people Thursday, officials and doctors said, as the country suffers its worst violence in years. Iraq has been hit by a year-long surge in bloodshed that has reached levels not seen since 2008, driven by widespread discontent among its Sunni Arab minority and by the civil war in neighbouring Syria. On Thursday evening, four car bombs exploded in Baghdad, killing at least 11 people and wounding 47, officials said. The bombings targeted a cafe, a market, a main street and an area of car dealerships. Militants frequently attack places where crowds gather, such as cafes, markets, football fields and mosques, in an effort to maximise casualties. The Baghdad blasts followed a car bombing near a checkpoint north of the capital that killed […]

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Suicide bomber uses Iraq police Humvee in attack

Authorities in Iraq say a suicide bomber has used a stolen police Humvee to pass through a military checkpoint and set off his explosives, wounding 14 people. The attack happened Saturday in Ramadi, the provincial capital of Anbar province, where Iraqi security forces have been battling militants who took control of parts of the town in late December. Police say militants stole the Humvee and painted it with military colors to trick soldiers into letting it by. Elsewhere on Saturday, police say a roadside bomb targeting a military vehicle in Baqouba, 35 miles (60 kilometers) northeast of Baghdad, killed a captain and wounded four soldiers. Medical officials confirmed the casualty figures for the attacks. All officials spoke on condition of anonymity as they weren’t authorized to release the information. © 2014 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or […]

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Genel Energy expects more oil from Kurdish north of Iraq

LONDON, March 6 (UPI) — Oil produced from the Kurdish region of Iraq was lower than expected during the fourth quarter, though the trend should reverse, Genel Energy said Thursday. Anglo-Turkish company Genel said net production in 2013 averaged 44,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day, about 6,000 barrels less than expected. A late 2013 fire at the company’s Taq Taq field and "pricing sensitivity in the domestic market" for oil from the Tawke field, both in the Kurdish north of Iraq, were the primary causes of the production shortfall, it said. "Production guidance for 2014 is set at 60,000 – 70,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day, translating into a revenue guidance range of between $500 million – $600 million," the company said in a Thursday report. "Production volumes are expected to grow significantly year-on-year as the new [Kurdish] export pipeline comes into operation." The Kurdistan Regional Government […]

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Iraq returns as world's fastest-growing oil exporter

* Iraq boosts February exports to 35-year high * Oil execs say more Iraqi growth possible in 2014 * OPEC delegates relaxed, for now, about extra Iraqi oil By Alex Lawler and Peg Mackey LONDON, March 5 (Reuters) – Iraq is reclaiming its rank as the world’s fastest-growing oil exporter, cushioning consumers from Libyan supply outages for now and, perhaps, reviving OPEC market share rivalries down the road. Despite worsening violence due to spillover from the war in Syria, Iraq – already OPEC’s second-largest producer – is likely to post one of the biggest annual output jumps in its history as BP, Exxon Mobil and other companies tap its southern fields, which are untouched by the unrest. With many export bottlenecks now cleared at the southern Basra terminals – from which almost all of Iraq’s crude is shipped – Baghdad is expected to keep up, or even exceed, the […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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Iraq returns as world’s fastest-growing oil exporter

* Iraq boosts February exports to 35-year high * Oil execs say more Iraqi growth possible in 2014 * OPEC delegates relaxed, for now, about extra Iraqi oil By Alex Lawler and Peg Mackey LONDON, March 5 (Reuters) – Iraq is reclaiming its rank as the world’s fastest-growing oil exporter, cushioning consumers from Libyan supply outages for now and, perhaps, reviving OPEC market share rivalries down the road. Despite worsening violence due to spillover from the war in Syria, Iraq – already OPEC’s second-largest producer – is likely to post one of the biggest annual output jumps in its history as BP, Exxon Mobil and other companies tap its southern fields, which are untouched by the unrest. With many export bottlenecks now cleared at the southern Basra terminals – from which almost all of Iraq’s crude is shipped – Baghdad is expected to keep up, or even exceed, the […]

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Gazprom Neft ties Iraqi oil fields to main pipeline network

Russian oil company Gazprom Neft said Wednesday it connected two oil fields in eastern Iraq to the country’s central pipeline network. The company said it completed laying, testing and connecting a 100-mile oil pipeline from the Badra oil field in Wasit province to the Gharraf oil field in neighboring Nassariya province. "With infrastructure already in place at Gharraf, completion of the pipeline from Badra means that the field is now connected to the main Iraqi pipeline system," the company said in a statement. Gazprom Neft said the new system can support about 204,000 barrels of oil per day for an export terminal at the southern port city of Basra. Gazprom Neft serves as the operator at Badra in a consortium that includes Korean and Brazilian counterparts. The company is operating under the terms of a 2009 agreement with the Iraqi government to develop the […]

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Gunmen seize city council in Iraq's Samarra

An armed group in military uniform has seized the city council headquarters in the Iraqi city of Samarra and taken employees hostage, the second such attack in recent months. Two fighters, possibly wearing explosives-rigged vests or belts, seized the Samarra city council building on Tuesday morning with an unknown number of employees inside, security officials said. "The gunmen are in the council building," Police Lieutenant Dhafir Ahmed said, according to Reuters news agency. "Local council employees and court employees are trapped inside." Clashes broke out between the fighters and security forces, and a suicide bomber detonated an explosives-rigged vehicle near police and militia forces when they arrived at the scene. The blast wounded 24 people, most of them police, a doctor and an officer said, according to AFP news agency. The doctor also said that the deputy head of the city council […]

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Gunmen seize city council in Iraq’s Samarra

An armed group in military uniform has seized the city council headquarters in the Iraqi city of Samarra and taken employees hostage, the second such attack in recent months. Two fighters, possibly wearing explosives-rigged vests or belts, seized the Samarra city council building on Tuesday morning with an unknown number of employees inside, security officials said. "The gunmen are in the council building," Police Lieutenant Dhafir Ahmed said, according to Reuters news agency. "Local council employees and court employees are trapped inside." Clashes broke out between the fighters and security forces, and a suicide bomber detonated an explosives-rigged vehicle near police and militia forces when they arrived at the scene. The blast wounded 24 people, most of them police, a doctor and an officer said, according to AFP news agency. The doctor also said that the deputy head of the city council […]

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Iraqi Kurdistan crude at Ceyhan reaches 1 mil barrels: Turkish minister

The volume of crude from the northern Iraq region of Kurdistan being held in tanks at Turkey’s Mediterranean oil hub of Ceyhan has reached 1 million barrels, Turkish energy minister Taner Yildiz told reporters Wednesday in a press conference televised live on Turkey’s CNBCE business news channel. Yildiz stated that the crude is being held "in the name of Iraq," but did not mention how much storage space was available to hold crude from the Kurdistan region before it would become necessary to allow exports to start, nor whether Turkey will allow exports to start or will continue to store the oil until an agreement is reached between the Iraqi central government in Baghdad and the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) in Erbil. Replying to a question on the status of negotiations between Baghdad and the KRG over oil from the region which has since […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple