Category: Iraq
The Economist | Iraq, Kurds, Turks and oil: A tortuous triangle
The governments of Turkey, Iraq and Iraqi Kurdistan play a dangerous game
Dec 22nd 2012 | ERBIL |From the print edition
SNAKING their way from Kirkuk, a city 240 kilometres (150 miles) north of Baghdad, through Kurdistan and across Turkey’s eastern region of Anatolia to the Mediterranean are pipes that once carried 1.6m barrels a day (b/d) of Iraqi oil to the global market and yielded fat transit fees to Turkey along the way. The infrastructure underpinned the two countries’ mutual dependence. But nowadays the balance of power has shifted. A third party, the Iraqi Kurds, has changed it. It is unclear who will emerge on top. But Iraq’s central government in Baghdad is on the defensive.
Wars, saboteurs and, since the 1990s, economic sanctions have left the Iraqi sections of the pipeline system in a mess. Barely a fraction of its capacity is used. One of the two parallel lines stands empty and the source that once fed them, the giant Kirkuk oilfield, is dilapidated. The oil ministry in Baghdad has vague ideas about revamping the pipeline, perhaps to carry crude extracted near Basra, in the far south, though this would need an expensive new pipeline to link both ends of the country. (…)
Read the rest of the piece here.
The Economist | Iraq’s oil: The Kurdish opening
Iraqi Kurds and Western oil firms have outfoxed the government in Baghdad
Nov 3rd 2012 | from the print edition
IRAQ is blessed with abundant oil that is cheap to extract and close to newly built export terminals. Production has hit a three-decade high and continues to rise steadily. By 2035, predicts the International Energy Agency (IEA), an advocate for rich-world consumers, Iraqi output could more than double, to 8.3m barrels per day (b/d).
But Western oil firms are increasingly reluctant to play a part in this boom. ExxonMobil appears keen to sell its stake in West Qurna, one of the giant fields in southern Iraq that will provide much of the production growth. Royal Dutch Shell and BP are both still working in the south, but unhappily so. Suffocating bureaucracy and onerous contract terms make life difficult. Heavier-than-expected costs and delays to infrastructure undercut profits. (…)
Read the rest of my piece here.
The Hormuz red herring
Talk of conflict in the Strait of Hormuz misses the real threat to the global oil market, says Derek Brower
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Iraq… the oil sands… and the gas glut
I’m busy. In addition to editing the ever-expanding Petroleum Economist and its excellent new channel on unconventional energy (called, imaginatively enough, PE Unconventional), I’ve four major writing projects on the go.
- A long piece for The Economist on the tar sands (or oil sands, if you prefer)
- An in-depth look, for Petroleum Economist, at Iraq’s ambitions as an oil producer
- Another take on the global gas glut, also for Petroleum Economist
- And my book on oil addiction and the decline of the West
The last of these is a weekend and weekday 5am-7am project. The early starts are the only hours I can find when my children aren’t commanding space, time, and energy. (**I’m not complaining. Frankly, they’re more interesting.**)
The usual requests: if anyone wishes to contact me about stories, you know where to find me.
