29 July 2010

* Managing Expectations in Iraq’s Post-Conflict Climate By Tariq Abdell

* Iran’s Nuclear Program and the Destruction of the Oil and Gas Sectors : Randa Takieddine , Iran’s oil and gas sector is currently experiencing conditions that remind us of what happened in Iraq during the Saddam Hussein years, when the sector was destroyed by sanctions and successive wars, a process of destruction culminating with the American-led invasion. Iraq’s oil sector has yet to recover from the impact of this experience and Iraq will require years of efforts and investments to regain its previous productive capacity. Iraq has the second-largest reserves of crude oil among the countries of OPEC, after Saudi Arabia. Today, the oil and gas sector of Iran, which is OPEC’s third-largest producer, is deteriorating, although it has the world’s second- or third-largest reserves of natural gas. The squandering of the resources of the Iranian and Iraqi peoples is painful. How is the Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad failing to read recent history and see that his regime is helping the destruction of its oil industry and natural gas wealth for years to come, in pursuit of a nuclear bomb that will only increase poverty and economic deterioration in a country rich in its resources, its people and its heritage?

GENEVA — The United Nations released 650 million dollars in Iraqi compensation to Kuwait on Thursday, the latest payment of a war reparation scheme that began in 1994. The payment brings the total sum of compensation paid to Kuwait to 30.15 billion dollars. A further 22.3 billion dollars is due to Kuwait. (Sheer robbery .. the Iraqis will never forget or forgive Kuwait for it's role in pushing Saddam into Iraq-Iran war, stealing oil which belong to Iraq, and provoking Saddam into Kuwait invasion by staging an oil policy flooding the market with oil and thus strangling the weak Iraq economy after years of war and finally punishing the Iraqi people for Saddam crimes through immensely exaggerated compensations )

28 July 2010

*Top 7 suppliers of oil to the US

* PARIS (Dow Jones)--French power and transport engineering maker Alstom SA (ALO.FR) Wednesday said it has signed a memorandum of understanding with the Iraqi Minister of Oil and Electricity, Hussein Sharestani, for the development and modernisation of Iraq's electricity infrastructure. The agreement covers three projects; the turnkey supply of a power plant at Bassorah in southern Iraq, the rehabilitation of the gas-fired power plant at Najaf, and the supply and supervision of substations in various locations, Alstom said in a statement.

* HOUSTON (Dow Jones)--Occidental Petroleum Corp. (OXY) said Tuesday that the company expects to invest about $100 million this year in Iraq. The spending is "uncertain" because the schedules of investment aren't exactly nailed down, "but it's in the order of $100 million," Chief Financial Officer Steve Chazen said to analysts in an earnings conference call. Chazen also said Occidental's negotiations to pursue further opportunities in Iraq are "in the very early stages." Occidental is said to be in talks with Indonesia's Pertamina and Angolan parastatal Sonangol to partner in developing Iraq's Qaiyarah and Najmah oil fields, according to comments from a Sonangol executive made earlier this month

* The US department of defence has called in forensic accountants to help track $8.1bn (£5.2bn) of $9.1bn in Iraq's oil revenue entrusted to it after the fall of Baghdad, following an official audit that revealed the money was missing. The funds were to be used for spending on reconstruction during 2004-07, a period when Iraq was under weak transitional rule. The report was issued today by the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, which had previously criticised poor book-keeping by senior officials throughout the last seven years

* A Japanese tanker reported an early-morning explosion in the strategic Strait of Hormuz Wednesday, triggering worry from the ship owner and the Japanese government that the vessel had been attacked in the volatile waterway.

*Iraq June Oil Exports -4% On Month At 1.823 Million Bbl - Ministry

*MILAN (Reuters) - Italy's Eni said it would join forces with Egypt's national oil and gas companies in developments in Iraq and Gabon, strengthening ties with the country in which it is the biggest foreign energy player. In an emailed statement on Tuesday, Eni said the two companies -- EGPC and EGAS -- would participate in Eni's oil and gas upstream activities outside Egypt, including development of oil fields in Iraq and Gabon.

* Eight stories on Obama linked billionaire Nadhmi Auchi censored from the Guardian, Observer, Telegraph and New Statesman

* Malaysia's Petronas and Japan Petroleum Exploration, known as Japex, are planning to award shortly a deal to drill several wells at Iraq's untapped Garraf oil field in southern Iraq, a company executive said. 22 July 2010: The consortium is planning to drill two appraisal wells at Garraf this year starting in November, he said. We have issued a tender but we haven't awarded it yet," the executive told Dow Jones Newswires.

* Maysan will receive 50 billion Iraqi dinars [$42m], having been allocated one dollar for every barrel of oil produced from its fields, according to chairman of the Maysan Council. “After the Iraqi government’s approval to allocate one dollar for every oil barrel produced in the oil-producing provinces, Missan will receive 50 billion dinars this year,” Abdulhussein Abdulreda told Aswat al-Iraq news agency. (On one hand this may be a welcome move considering the total neglect that the provinces suffered from in the past, on the other hand there are those who argue that oil belongs to all of the country and this may not be fair to the many provinces which do not produce oil)

* HAJ UMRAN Iraq (Reuters) Kurdish Crude Oil Still Smuggled to Iran - Despite a pledge by Iraqi Kurdistan to crack down on the flow of fuel being smuggled to Iran, the only real impediment truck drivers say they face are long lines that force them to wait for days to cross. Perhaps around 100 tanker trucks corralled into groups of 10 or a dozen by Kurdish police idled on the road to the border point of Haj Umran on Tuesday, waiting for their chance to pass over to unload fuel at Iranian ports or fuel depots. "I've been waiting for two days to be able to pass over to Iran and take my 24 tonnes of fuel safely to Bandar Abbas port," said Barzan Hussain, a driver who works for a Kurdish shipping company based in Arbil. The cross-border trade in fuel is a challenge to U.S. efforts to impose sanctions on Iran over its nuclear research programme, and an embarrassment for Washington's Kurdish allies, eager to remain in the good books of the United States as U.S. troops prepare to withdraw from Iraq by the end of 2011.

July 20, 2010

Investing in Iraq: Post-Conflict Constraints and Rewards: By Tariq Abdell

BAGHDAD, July 20 (Reuters) - Iraq's Oil Ministry has asked British oil major BP and Chinese partner CNPC to turn their signature bonus for Rumaila oilfield into an unrecoverable but lower payment rather than a soft loan, an Iraqi official said on Tuesday.

FACTBOX-Iraq's oil deals, signed and still to come

Biden's sectarian vision of Iraq is rejected by most Iraqis with new political realities emerging :  by Reidar Visser: During a recent press conference, Vice-President Tareq al-Hashemi made it clear that during his visit to Baghdad Joe Biden reportedly voiced concern about a government scenario in which none of the three leading positions (president, prime minister or speaker of parliament) would be given to a “Sunni personality”! In a healthy sign, Hashemi told him not to worry, reflecting the fact that with the exception of the Kurds, most Iraqis are generally unhappy about the idea of enshrining ethno-sectarian identities in the administrative structure of the state. Nonetheless, this is in fact the scenario that currently seems to be on the cards, and it is deeply worrying that Washington appears to spend energy at the highest level of government worrying about the least troublesome aspect of it all. It is of course not the least surprising after the string of failed US attempts at understanding sectarianism in Iraq: The search for a “Sunni region”, the Sunnis as the sahwat, achieving Sunni satisfaction through gas finds in Anbar, the importance of getting Tawafuq back in government, the Sunnis as Ayad al-Samarraie… The list goes on and on. But this situation is particularly disconcerting at a time when politicians from both Iraqiyya and SLA like Izzat Shabandar and Haydar al-Jawrani explicitly protest against the Biden paradigm when they advocate an anti-sectarian approach, Shabandar even making it clear that it is the perpetuation of Biden’s way of thinking in the shape of a “Shiite” alliance between his own SLA and INA that would cement Iranian dominance in Iraq.

19 July 2010

The Obama administration says the United States will stick to a timetable for withdrawing troops from Iraq, despite the country's inability to form a coalition government and continuing sectarian violence. Just one month remains for the Obama administration to complete the scheduled withdrawal of U.S. combat forces from Iraq. Vice President Joe Biden says Iraq is ready to stand on its own.

A suicide bomber on Sunday killed at least 43 in an attack on members of the Sunni Awakening, which helped turned the tide against Al Qaeda in Iraq. Iraqis are concerned Al Qaeda could regain ground as the US pulls out its combat troops next month.

BP To Drill 80-100 New Oil Wells In Iraq's Rumaila : BAGHDAD (Dow Jones)--British oil major BP PLC (BP, BP.LN) and partners China National Petroleum Corp. (CNPC.YY) and Iraq's state-run South Oil Co. expect to issue tenders to drill between 80 and 100 wells in the immense Rumaila oil field this year and next year, a company executive said Monday. Earlier this year, BP awarded three deals valued at least $500 million to drill 49 wells as part of the program to develop Iraq's largest-producing oil field, which could become the world's second-largest.

 ExxonMobil  and its partner Royal Dutch Shell  have not been affected by a delay in the formation of Iraq's new government and work on their West Qurna Phase One project is moving ahead, an Exxon executive said on Monday. Exxon expects to tender later this year to drill new wells in the supergiant field and will award within four weeks contracts for well services, which could include some work-over, said ExxonMobil Iraq Vice President James Adams.

Italian oil major Eni SpA (ENI.MI) is expected to award a tender to drill more than 100 new oil wells at Zubair oil field in southern Iraq in August, a company executive said Sunday. "We received the bids and we are in the process of assessing them," the executive said.

Occidental Petroleum Corp. (OXY) and Indonesia's Pertamina are in talks with Angolan parastatal Sonangol to partner it in developing Iraq's Qaiyarah and Najmah oil fields, a Sonangol executive said Sunday. "We are meeting with them next month to discuss (a possible tie-up)," Jose Luis, Sonangol's Qaiyarah and Najamah asset manager, told Dow Jones Newswires on the sideline of an oil symposium in Baghdad, which is being held to discuss the best ways for the government to co-ordinate and implement the country's oil expansion plans.

18 July 2010

Oil Majors Boost Plans to Expand Iraq Oil Output: Iraq's oil ministry has been hosting a two-day symposium for executives of companies that last year won contracts to help develop some of Iraq's biggest oil fields. While some companies have already begun working on their blocs, Iraqi oil officials and Western executives have acknowledged immense logistical challenges in the push.

Iraqiya says Allawi to meet Sadr in Syria : Another twist in the saga of forming the long delayed Iraqi government. The fierce anti American and fanatic Shiite leader Muktada Al-Sadr had previously vetoed choosing Almaliky for the position of prime minister and branded the attempt for an alliance between Allawi's block and Al-Maliky's as an American plot. Now, Syria is asserting its role as regional player by soliciting this meeting of the pro-American and x-Bathist (Allawi) and Al-Sadr.

17 July

* Suicides among US army seems to be a regular event that draws little attention …Military officials said Thursday that last month, 32 soldiers either killed themselves or were believed to have done

* Camp Cropper, the last detention center under U.S. control in Iraq, was turned over to Iraq's justice minister, officials said. Human rights groups are rightly worried because of the miserable record of the various Iraqi authorities and their failure to prevent abuse and torture in the prisons under it’s control.

* Kurds and Baghdad in row over oil smuggling : Horami, the Kurdish regional minister in charge of oil, denies the accusation of exporting crude oil, but admits ferrying unspecified quantities of by-products. A senior Kurdish opposition official of the Kurdish Change Party said the ruling Kurdish factions of Massoud Barzani, head of the Kurdish region and Jalal Talabani, the Iraqi president, were involved in the smuggling.

* Oil Ministry: Iraqi Export reaches 1.9M barrels

* Vast Exploration Inc.-Drilling Update on Exploration Well in Kurdistan Region-Iraq

* 3-DNO stock surges on RAK Petroleum bid talk : Britain's Daily Telegraph newspaper reported that RAK Petroleum had made an offer to buy DNO shares at 11 crowns per share, citing what it called well-placed market sources.

* Iraq oil revenues 95% of state income: minister : Oil Minister Hussein al-Shahristani said Iraq raised 171 billion dollars from sales between 2006-2009, which accounted for all but five percent of the government’s income during those years. Shahristani said the following amounts were raised from oil:

• 30bn in 2006;
• $40bn in 2007;
• $60bn in 2008; and,
• $41bn in 2009

* Foster Wheeler wins oil work contract in Iraq : Foster Wheeler said it will install two onshore and offshore pipelines and other facilities by July 2013. It said the work would increase Iraq's Basra export capacity by 2014 to 4.5 million barrels per day from 1.8 million. Foster Wheeler said it will handle purchase orders and contracts for Iraq's South Oil Co., which is under Iraq's Ministry of Oil.