Kurdistan Oil & Gas Development

[alan131210]

here it is , they have now updated it full story is in rudaw newspaper no 232.

http://rudaw.net/kurdish/index.php/news/17816.html

[burnsss]

(Reuters) - Exxon Mobil wants to leave its flagship Iraqi oil project after upsetting Baghdad by signing a deal last year with the autonomous northern Kurdish region, which the central government deemed illegal.

It wants to leave its contract to develop the giant West Qurna-1 oilfield in southern Iraq , diplomatic sources said on Thursday, because of concerns over the profitability of the project.

Exxon has informed Iraq's Deputy Prime Minister for Energy Hussain al-Shahristani and the U.S. State Department of its intentions, said two U.S. officials.

"Exxon is telling Baghdad: 'We are letting you know we're looking to leave,'" one of the diplomats said. "They are shopping around and looking at all the options.

Shahristani declined to say whether Exxon was pulling out, but told Reuters in an email that Baghdad was sticking to its line that all contract signed with the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) without the approval of Baghdad were illegal.

"All companies that entered in such contracts were asked to cancel them or pull out," Shahristani said.

"Exxon Mobil can be contacted about their decision."

Exxon declined to comment.

[burnsss]

Oct 18 (Reuters) - Exxon Mobil has not informed Iraq of its interest in quitting the country's West Qurna oilfield project, and no meetings have been held between the two sides to discuss any such decision, two senior Iraqi government oil sources said on Thursday.

"We have not met with Exxon to discuss its withdrawal from the West Qurna contract and Exxon have not informed us of its intention to quit," one Iraqi official said, asking not to be identified because he was not authorized to speak to the media.

hehe Iraq got owned for its lies and propaganda, wasnt it iraq who wanted texxon replaced and know they dont know

[burnsss]

(Reuters) - A U.S. official confirmed on Thursday that Exxon Mobil told the State Department it is seeking to leave Iraq's West Qurna oilfield project.

"They've got a contract and they have to exit the contract," the official said about Exxon, which had concerns about the profitability of the project.

The State Department declined to comment on the record.


Who will develop the field now your stupid communist Shahristani. Its game over for iraq they had the chance of having federation with kurds but their chauvinism took over and now we will get US support for independence. maliki the stupoid sectarian shite aligne himself with iran syria and Russia and will pay for its stupidity now.

[alan131210]

wow GREAT news it was reconfirmed by Exxon on reuters

U.S. official confirms Exxon seeking to leave Iraq's West Qurna
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSBRE89H0W920121018

. I still remember shahrstani representative mr sheytanelkabir on SSC was telling KAK ideas that Exxon or any supermajors will never go to kurdistan and will choose Iraq over Kurdistan, bcoz iraq is such a developed and safe country and shahrstani was a successful man bla bla bla and will blacklist any supermajors if they go there well guess what! It turned out exactly the otherway around, we now have 4 supermajors operating in SK including Russian Gazprom.

Lukoil is apparently replacing Exxon, US should and might reconsider selling Iraq weapons after Iraq making arm deals with Russia and working for the interests of Iranian mullah regime. Hopefully after the elections we will see some tuff decisions against Iraq and so far several US officials are asking to punish Iraq and withdraw all support from milky puppet.

[alan131210]

Kurdistan begins international oil exports, defying Baghdad

Kurdish oil sold into international markets via Powertrans

* Trafigura, Vitol become first customers loading ships in Oct

* Baghdad says it alone has right to control over Iraq oil, gas

By Jessica Donati and Peg Mackey

LONDON, Oct 22 (Reuters) - Kurdistan has begun selling its oil into international markets in independent export deals that further challenge Baghdad's claim to full control over Iraqi oil after first signing independent exploration deals with foreign oil majors last year.

The move is likely to enrage the government, which is still locked in a battle with Exxon Mobil over its independent deal with Kurdistan last year to explore for oil in six Kurdish blocs. But it also paves the way towards greater Kurdish autonomy as Baghdad has long insisted it alone has the right to market Iraqi oil and gas products.

By involving two of the world's largest trading houses, Trafigura and Vitol, Kurdistan has made it difficult for Baghdad to retaliate, as it depends on those firms for a proportion of its refined oil imports like gasoline and diesel. If Baghdad were to decide to shop elsewhere, it could face paying much higher prices for its fuel.

Trafigura snapped up the first cargo of Kurdish light oil -- known in the industry as condensate -- offered for delivery in October via the intermediary Powertrans. The oil was trucked across the country from a Kurdish field to Turkey, where it loaded at the start of the month.

Vitol was quick to follow, becoming the second major oil firm to buy Kurdish oil marketed independently of Baghdad, picking up a second 12,000 tonne cargo of condensate for loading at the end of the month. At around $890 a tonne, each shipment is worth over $10 million.

Iraqi officials say any deals independently agreed with Kurdistan are illegal and trading Kurdish oil and gas products without the central government's consent amounts to smuggling.

"Iraq maintains its right to legally pursue all those who participate in smuggling the property of the Iraqi people locally or internationally," said Iraq's government spokesman Ali Dabbagh, commenting on the Kurdish sales of oil to the Swiss trading houses.

Trafigura declined to comment, while Vitol confirmed it had bought a parcel of Kurdish origin for loading in Turkey, declining to comment any further on the deal.

"The small parcel was bought in a public tender, FOB Toros terminal, Turkey. No further comment," spokesman Mark Ware said.

In addition to supplying Baghdad with products, Vitol also has two term deals to buy Iraqi crude in 2012 for a total of around 22,000 barrels of oil per day (bpd).

EXPANSION

Kurdistan's potential as a major oil producer and exporter has proved to have greater weight with foreign oil firms than warnings by Baghdad that signing contracts with the autonomous region could put their contracts in the south at risk.

Exxon Mobil has been followed by other majors including Chevron, Total and Gazprom, as production-sharing deals with Arbil are seen as a far better arrangement than Baghdad's fee-for-service contracts.

Similarly, on the trading side, better prospects in the north have caught the attention of major oil traders, who are now prepared to risk Baghdad's anger to gain a foothold in Kurdistan while the region heads towards greater autonomy.

"Because this flow (exports from Kurdistan) is meant to be huge. Crude, naphtha, LPG, condensate, but yes, very political," said an oil trader, commenting on the logic for risking relations with Baghdad.

So far, Kurdistan's export volumes are tiny in comparison to its daily exports via national pipelines, moving around 1,000 tonnes of oil per day (about 8,000 bpd) to Turkey by truck, but deliveries are on the rise.

A Kurdish industry source in Arbil said condensate volumes were expected to reach 1,500 tonnes per day (about 12,000 bpd) by the end of October and more trucks would be made available towards the end of the year.

Kurdistan began its own exports of oil over the summer, swapping condensate for refined products such as diesel and kerosene with Turkey to help plug a product shortfall it says was created by Baghdad.

The trade agreement was endorsed by Ankara, but Baghdad said the deliveries by truck were illegal.

Kurdistan, autonomous with its own government and armed forces since 1991, gets central government funding and uses national pipelines to ship its oil.

The process has however been stop-start over the years due to a long-running feud between Baghdad and Arbil over oil and land rights. Exports were halted in April in a dispute over payments from Baghdad to companies working in the region and restarted in August.

In September a new deal was agreed with the central government on crude exports (set at 200,000 bpd in the last quarter of the year) and supply of refined oil products.

On Monday, Iraqi Kurdistan said it had agreed to raise exports to 250,000 barrels of oil per day (bpd) in 2013 if Baghdad pays operators in the autonomous region.

However the recent agreements solve only a few points of a broader feud between Baghdad and Kurdistan over oil exports, energy policy and territory.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/10/ ... HB20121022

[alan131210]

The Kurdistan Regional Government’s Minister for Natural Resources, Ashti Hawrami , has announced that the Kurdish region will be self-sufficient in oil products next year

He expects an increase in Kurdistan refinery’s production from 40,000 to 100,000 barrels per day, resulting in a surplus of oil products.

Minister Hawrami also disclosed that there are more oil companies interested in workin in Iraqi Kurdistan.

http://www.gulan-media.com/english/t_de ... =1&id=2568

[alan131210]

The Obama administration should pressure Exxon Mobil to slow down dealings with Iraqi Kurdistan as they could worsen disputes between Baghdad and the Kurdish region, Iraq's ambassador to the United States said.

Exxon angered Baghdad a year ago by signing an exploration deal with the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) in the north. The KRG quickly struck similar deals with other global oil companies but the central government in Baghdad deemed all the deals null and void.

Disputed areas between partly autonomous Kurdistan and Baghdad are seen as a potential flashpoint as tensions between regions of Iraq rise.

"We need the American government to exert some pressure on this company," Jabir Habeb, Iraq's ambassador to the United States, told reporters about Exxon after a panel on Iraq's energy potential at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

The ambassador said he met with a U.S. energy official recently who told him the U.S. government could not apply a lot of pressure on Exxon because the company makes decisions that benefit its shareholders. Habeb said he told the official the issue could cause political and social problems so it should not be seen as a shareholder issue.

Exxon did not immediately return a request for comment.

The energy company is hoping to exit its flagship West Qurna-1 oilfield project in southern Iraq, diplomatic sources said last week, as profits there are thin.

But analysts have said other oil companies from Russia and elsewhere may not have the know-how and resources to maximize production from the giant Qurna field.

Habeb said Iraq wants Exxon to stay in the south.

"We prefer them to be there and I think the potential of oil in the south of Iraq there's no comparison with the north of Iraq, so I think they understand this fact."

The Paris-based International Energy Agency released a report on Iraq this month that said oil production in the south could rise to 6.4 million barrels per day by 2035 in a mid-level scenario. Output could rise to 1.6 million bpd from the north by the same time period, it said.

[burnsss]

The Kurdistan Regional Government’s Minister for Natural Resources, Ashti Hawrami , has announced that the Kurdish region will be self-sufficient in oil products next year

He expects an increase in Kurdistan refinery’s production from 40,000 to 100,000 barrels per day, resulting in a surplus of oil products.

Minister Hawrami also disclosed that there are more oil companies interested in workin in Iraqi Kurdistan.

http://www.gulan-media.com/english/t_de ... =1&id=2568

Great news, if we become self-sufficent in food, oil product then nothing can stop independence

[Aslan]

Influential ExxonMobil is adding more weight to its support for Kurdish autonomy from Iraq. Facing unhappiness in Baghdad over its year-old defiance of a ban on direct dealings with Kurdistan, ExxonMobil has opted to find another company to take over its interest in Iraq’s supergiant West Qurna oilfield, say people with knowledge of the situation. By abandoning Iraq explicitly to be in Kurdistan, Exxon is making a rare open display of geopolitical muscle.

A flurry of reports was published a week ago after ExxonMobil reportedly informed Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister for Energy Hussain al-Shahristani that it is looking to sell its stake in West Qurna I to another company. I am told separately that ExxonMobil has interest from a few companies in the project, including from at least one global major.

Baghdad and Kurdistan have a tense working relationship in which they do business, but have difficulty deciding how to divide the profits. Over the last year, Kurdistan has built up leverage by offering highly attractive exploration contracts to foreign companies, compared with the miserly terms demanded by Iraq. Baghdad expressly prohibits foreign companies from signing directly with the Kurds, and the majors originally complied in the hopes that the terms would get better. But they haven’t. So, having lost hope, as we have discussed, a parade of oil companies have signed directly with Kurdistan—Chevron, Gazprom, and France’s Total.

But ExxonMobil’s perfidy is something different. Because of its size and history, when ExxonMobil makes a move, it tends to speak louder and create more ripples than its peers (in Quartz’s geopolitical energy indicators, ExxonMobil is one of the Mountains). It was news a year ago when it was leaked that the company signed with Kurdistan. But now, by pulling away from Iraq, it deals a harder blow to Baghdad’s prestige, while conferring more legitimacy on Kurdistan. Could this give the province a further nudge towards independence?

[alan131210]

The magnitude of Kurdish oil trumps diplomatic niceties

Iraq’s Kurdistan region in the country’s north may not be recognized as an independent state by the United Nations, let alone by Iraq’s central government, but Kurdistan has all the recognition it needs from those who count — the U.S.’s ExxonMobil, France’s Total, Russia’s Gazprom, European trading houses Trafigura and Vitol, and other players in the world’s energy markets.

Last year, ExxonMobil signed an independent exploration deal with Kurdistan despite threats from a livid Iraq, which threatened to bar ExxonMobil from Iraq if it did. Chevron and others, also ignoring Iraq’s threats, soon joined ExxonMobil. This week, Kurdistan sent its first independent oil exports into international markets, in a deal with Gemel, a British-Turkish company headed by former BP chief Tony Hayward, and backed by international financiers Nathaniel Rothschild and Paulson & Co.

Iraq’s threats against these companies, and its demands that its sovereignty over Kurdistan be recognized, have come to naught because the magnitude of Iraqi Kurdistan’s oil and gas trumps diplomatic niceties. While Iraq’s massive but underperforming energy resources in the south of Iraq languish due to government infighting and bureaucratic neglect, Kurdistan in the north has become one of the world’s hottest and most profitable regions for energy exploration, its largely untapped potential already boasting an estimated 45 billion barrels of oil, and six trillion cubic metres of natural gas.

Kurdistan’s clout relative to that of the rest of Iraq may well increase, too, should the pro-Western Kurds declare independence and formally break away from Iraq in a civil war. South of the current borders of Kurdistan lie oil-rich lands, including the major Kurdish cities of Mosul and Kirkuk, its traditional capital, from which Kurds had been expelled by Saddam Hussein in order to Arabize the region.

If the Kurds succeed in establishing sovereignty over all their historic lands within Iraq, a much diminished Iraq would lose its recently regained status as OPEC’s No. 2 oil exporter while Kurdistan would emerge as one of the Middle East’s largest energy exporters. The oil majors’ willingness to rebuff Iraq in their play for Kurdish oil is, as much as anything, a bet that Iraq will not be able to regain control over Kurdistan.

It’s a good bet, largely because of the way the Iraq war has played out. With the U.S. Army having unexpectedly pulled out of Iraq without securing an ongoing military presence through a Status of Forces agreement, the country and its oil wealth is increasingly falling under Iranian control, to the West’s chagrin. The West would back Kurdistan’s survival in the event of war — a pro-Western Kurdish state would deny Iran energy resources that would help it finance mischief. Moreover, a Kurdistan would create a potent ally of the West in the Middle East, blunting the Muslim Brotherhood’s advance throughout the region and joining Israel as the West’s only reliable partner.

While an Iran-backed Iraq might seem a formidable foe in a war against a breakaway Kurdistan, it would likely not succeed. For one thing, the Kurds are fierce fighters and have been throughout their 2,500-year-history — it was a great Muslim Kurd, Saladin, who defeated the Crusaders to retake Jerusalem. For another, the dream of a country of their own — as promised to them after the Ottoman Empire collapsed in the First World War — is a national imperative. With arms from the U.S. and Israel, which have helped Kurdish resistance for decades, Kurds are likely to be more than a match against strife-torn Iraqi opposition.

The oil industry knows how to play geopolitics.

Lawrence Solomon is executive director of Energy Probe. Lawrence Solomon is one of Canada's leading environmentalists. His book, The Conserver Solution (Doubleday) popularized the Conserver Society concept in the late 1970s and became the manual for those interested in incorporating environmental factors into economic life. An advisor to President Jimmy Carter's Task Force on the Global Environment (the Global 2000 Report) in the late 1970's, he has since been at the forefront of movements to reform foreign aid, stop nuclear power expansion and adopt toll roads. Mr. Solomon is a founder and managing director of Energy Probe Research Foundation and the executive director of its Urban Renaissance Institute division. He has been a columnist for The Globe and Mail, a contributor to the Wall Street Journal, the editor and publisher of the award-winning The Next City magazine, and the author or co-author of seven books, most recently The Deniers, the #1 environmental best-seller in both Canada and the U.S.

financialpost.com

[alan131210]

we do not need them anyways, we have the 4 big boys already

[crazyhorse]

The Italian oil and gas company Eni has confirmed that they do not intend to invest in Kurdistan.

Source: http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/10/ ... 2720121031

Who?

[alan131210]

There is no such thing as "Iraqi Kurd" we are Kurdistani Kurds Iraq is creation of the British colony

[alan131210]