Category: Iraq

Iraqi Kurdistan’s aspiration to become an independent oil exporter took a hit Friday, when Baghdad criticized the semiautonomous region for publicly planning international sales before striking a deal with the central government. The Kurdistan Regional Government said it plans to sell the first parcel of oil at the end of January through the Kurdistan Oil Marketing Organization, rather than Iraq’s State Oil Marketing Organization. Iraq’s oil ministry responded with "deep regret" and bewilderment, saying Friday that Kurdistan’s plans are a "flagrant violation of the provisions of the Iraqi constitution." The ministry also criticized Turkey’s government for allowing Kurdish oil to pass through the Iraqi-Turkish pipeline without Baghdad’s consent. Exports without Baghdad’s approval could prove fraught. Iraq’s oil ministry has threatened to take legal action against any company that buys Kurdish oil exported without Baghdad’s blessing. The twist is the latest on a long and tortured road to an agreement […]

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Baker Hughes Inc. warned that a disruption to its business in Iraq last year will reduce its fourth-quarter profit by about $80 million. The oil-field services company, which resumed operations by the end of December, had warned in November that it suspended operations in Iraq following a protest incident at a facility belonging to one of its units. Baker Hughes had said there was a significant […]

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g Many Americans are surprised to see Fallujah back on the front pages of newspapers. How did things get so bad that the Iraqi government was compelled to call for American support in its battle against an al-Qaeda affiliate, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria? This crescendo of violence is the culmination of two well-established trajectories. The first trajectory is the worsening violence in Syria and the way in which the unrest has bled into neighboring states. While Jordan, Turkey and Lebanon have borne the bulk of Syria’s refugees, Iraq has suffered greatly under the weight of Syria’s oozing sectarianism. In many ways, Syria (a Sunni majority country long ruled by an Allawite minority) is the mirror image of Iraq (a majority Shi’a country long ruled by a Sunni minority). Iraq had only begun to heal from its sectarian war when the venom of Syria’s […]

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A suicide bomber detonated explosives on Thursday among a group of recruits who were joining the Iraqi Army to fight Al Qaeda in Anbar Province, the police said. Twenty-two recruits were killed, and 31 were wounded, officials said. The recruits were lined up just outside the entrance gate at the Muthana airfield in Baghdad when the attacker joined the line and blew himself up. “We came to join the army to fight Al Qaeda, and this will not stop us,” Ali Jasim, one of the recruits at the base, said in a telephone interview after the blast. Mr. Jasim said the attack was an attempt by Sunni militants to stop the flow of government troops to Anbar, where Qaeda fighters have taken control of significant parts of the two main cities, Ramadi and Falluja. “We are here to die for our country; we’ve had enough of them,” […]

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Russian energy company Gazprom Neft said Thursday its first volumes of oil were produced from the Badra field near the eastern Iraqi border with Iran. Gazprom Neft said it moved one step closer to commercial production after recording a daily natural flow rate of 7,000 barrels of oil from the Badra field. Vadim Yakovlev, first deputy chief executive officer at Gazprom Neft, said the company started "practically from scratch" three years ago and was now nearly finished with the infrastructure necessary for large-scale production at Badra. Gazprom Neft serves as the operator at Badra in a consortium that includes Korean and Brazilian counterparts. Gazprom Neft under the terms of a 2009 agreement with the Iraqis will develop the Badra field in Wasit province for the next 20 years. Total capacity could reach 170,000 barrels per day. The company said apart from the commercial infrastructure, […]

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It is back to a wounded past in Fallujah, the city ravaged by an American offensive in 2004, one of the bloodiest episodes in the US occupation of Iraq. The Sunni Muslim town fell into the grip of jihadis earlier this week and has since been threatened with a large-scale assault by the Shia Muslim-led government in Baghdad. Yet today, just as much as a decade ago, Fallujah embodies a broader political problem of Sunni disenfranchisement that is unlikely to be resolved by tanks and artillery. True, Fallujah takes pride in its reputation as a rebellious town, its population still holding on to memories of the US offensive, which was launched after the murder of American contractors whose bodies were viciously left hanging on a bridge. Even as its people rebuilt the schools and hospitals, a few buildings were deliberately left in ruins to remind them of the assault, […]

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Few goods transit the desert border between the Middle East ’s two biggest oil producers, and Saudi authorities have built a fence to help ensure that political instability in Iraq doesn’t cross over either. Dysfunctional ties between the countries have come into focus as a wave of violence sweeps Iraq, turning it into another arena where Saudi interests are diverging from those of the U.S. Fighting is centered in Anbar province, bordering Saudi Arabia , where Sunni fighters with ties to al-Qaeda are rebelling against the Shiite-led government of Nouri al-Maliki, which is supported by Iran . The Saudi view is that Maliki is “aggravating the feelings of marginalization that some Iraqi Sunnis have long complained about, and that are at the root of the current violence,” said Fahad Nazer, a political analyst at Vienna, Virginia-based intelligence analyst JTG, and a former analyst for the Saudi embassy in Washington […]

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A suicide bomber blew himself up at a military recruiting center in Baghdad on Thursday, killing at least 12 people – an attack that was likely retaliation for the Iraqi government’s campaign to retake two cities overrun by al-Qaida militants. The attacker detonated his explosives outside the recruiting center in the city’s central Allawi neighborhood as volunteers were waiting to register inside, according to a police official. At least 25 people were wounded in the blast, he said. A hospital official confirmed the casualty numbers. Both officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media. There was no immediate claim of responsibility, but suicide attacks are the hallmark of al-Qaida’s Iraq branch, known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. Its fighters last week overran parts of the key cities of Fallujah and Ramadi, both […]

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The authorities in Iraq’s self-ruled northern Kurdish region say they’ve unilaterally started exporting crude oil through Turkey despite objections by the central government in Baghdad. The Kurds’ regional Natural Resources Ministry said in a statement late Wednesday that pumping started in early January. The oil is being shipped north through a newly constructed pipeline to the Turkish port of Ceyhan, bypassing Baghdad. The Kurdish ministry has invited companies to participate in a January tender for the 2 million barrels already deposited in Ceyhan. It anticipates an increase in exports to 4 million barrels in February and 6 million barrels in March, with the goal of 10-12 million barrels in December. Kurds and Arab-led government in Baghdad have been in a long-running dispute over who is in charge of oil exports. © 2014 The Associated Press . All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, […]

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