Iraq Oil Report

The national Oil Ministry intends to move forward on developing the oil and gas sector, while it cuts out companies who have signed with the Kurdistan Regional Government, deals Baghdad calls illegal. Meanwhile there’s no sign of any breakthrough on the oil law.

Iraq’s Oil Ministry has reportedly cut current and will block future deals as part of a blacklist of firms that have signed oil contracts with the Kurd region, United Press International reports.

Iraq’s Kurds want to focus on reviving the country’s oil law, but high-profile talks during a U.S. visit haven’t forced progress as they hoped, UPI reports.

India’s Reliance Industries says its deal with Iraq’s Kurds is from 2006 and thus shouldn’t be a target of Iraq’s central government aim at Kurd deals, UPI reports.

Black market auto fuel in Baghdad has jumped in price, IraqSlogger reports.

It’s to the front lines for Iraqi Kurds and their critics. Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, a Kurdish leader, will sue a local Kurdish newspaper Hawlati for translating and republishing a critical column written by Michael Rubin of the American Enterprise Institute. Amer Mohsen of IraqSlogger.com reports Talabani will sue Rubin as well.

“Neither Talabani nor Barzani have sued me,” Rubin told Iraq Oil Report, “although they said they did for domestic consumption after Hawlati published excerpts. For that matter, no one from the KRG has even bothered to contact me to register displeasure.”

Here’s the column by Rubin, Is Iraqi Kurdistan a Good Ally?

Recent oil negotiations demonstrate the continued blurring of the Kurdish political and commercial spheres. To win oil exploration concessions and development contracts in Erbil and Duhok, companies must partner silently with a Barzani-appointed associate. Several officials close to various oil negotiations say Barzani’s associates have requested that up to 10 percent of future revenue go to Barzani personally and an equal amount to Barzani’s political party. The KRG’s public treasury is a secondary concern, even if the oil, in theory, is a resource for the entire Kurdistan region, if not Iraq. Such conflicts of interest are not new. Documents seized after Saddam’s fall discuss business dealings between Nechervan Barzani and Saddam’s sons. Corruption increasingly filters downward. According to a local nongovernmental organization (NGO) in Halabja, in 2006, a suspicious fire destroyed the archives of the PUK’s teachers’ union after an audit was ordered concerning embezzlement of union funds. However, many Iraqi Kurds say they had hoped the U.S. presence would catalyze reform, transparency, and accountability.

Today’s Zaman published the op-ed “Kurdish problem in Iraq: an American perspective.” Authors Emre Uslu, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Utah’s Middle East Center, and Önder Aytaç, associate professor at Gazi University and works with the Security Studies Institute in Ankara, which quotes an American working in Iraq’s views on alleged corruption and all-out ambitions of Kurdish leadership.

The U.S. National Counter-Terrorism Center says it was a mistake to include the symbol of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan — the political party headed by Iraqi President Jalal Talabani — on a list of “terrorist logos” that police should be on the lookout for during traffic stops and other contacts with members of the public, UPI Homeland and National Security Editor Shaun Waterman reports.

After successfully escaping the violence of their home country, many displaced Iraqis in Jordan say they have been trapped by not-so-much-better circumstances in their host country. A harsh winter and a fierce cold wave were the last to be expected to eat away at Iraqis’ savings which they have kept for a rainy day, Voices of Iraq reports.

Iraq’s parliament gave a first reading on Monday to a draft law that offers a general amnesty to thousands of detainees held in US and Iraqi prisons in a bid to boost national reconciliation, AFP reports.The detainees, mostly Sunni Arabs, are being held without charge. Most have been detained for more than a year on suspicion of backing the anti-US insurgency.

Not all of the 26,000 detained will be eligible for release. But I imagine many who are will not only have to overcome the psychological hell of being imprisoned, without charge, but will be ripe for carrying out retribution against the Iraqi government and the U.S. military. And I don’t imagine there is too much of a reintegration process. This should be addressed and, if not…

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