Kirkuk Oil Battle Heats Up … Oil Funds for Refugees … Lukoil on Talking Terms With Baghdad Again

Iraq's Oil Ministry is accusing the Kurdistan region of preventing development of one of Iraq's oldest, largest and most controversial oil fields, another dispute in the battle over control of the country's vast reserves.While the rift has been public, the issue of the Kirkuk oil field project is starting to surface in conflicting accounts. …"We have an engineering procurement contract. When equipment arrived, we started working ourselves," Falah al-Khawaja, director general of the State Company for Oil Projects, an arm of the ministry, said on the sidelines of an oil conference in London. "They prevented us from continuing our work, which is actually against the law."Khawaja wouldn't elaborate on who "they" actually are, adding: "I've been there. I know what's going on in Khurmala. The equipment started to arrive only seven months ago."

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