Thread: Archive Latest News - Think Tank - 16/08/07 - 03/11/07

Addax readies $1 bln Iraq Kurdish oilfield plan

DUBAI, Sept 2 (Reuters) - Addax Petroleum (AXC.TO: Quote, Profile, Research) and Genel Enerji expect to submit a $1 billion development plan within weeks to Iraq's Kurdish region for their joint venture TTopco's Taq Taq oilfield, a TTopco executive said Sunday.

Output from the field could hit 200,000 barrels per day (bpd) by 2010, Les Blair, General Manager of TTopco, told Reuters.

"The production plateau is up to 200,000 bpd," Blair said. "In the coming weeks we'll submit the field development plan. Investment would be approximately $1 billion."

The plan will go to Iraq's semi-autonomous Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) for approval. The blueprint requires access to an export route for the oil as output would exceed local demand, Blair said.

In May 2006, Swiss-based Addax and Turkey's Genel Enerji signed a 25-year production sharing agreement (PSA) with the KRG for Taq Taq.
The oilfield is 60 kms north of the giant Kirkuk oilfield in Iraq, which has been plagued by a brutal insurgency since a U.S.-led invasion in March 2003.

But the Kurdish region has been relatively stable and the government -- hungry for development -- has encouraged operators such as TTopco to begin work.

The KRG plans to boost output to one million bpd in about five years from just a few thousand bpd now. It has inked five PSAs and has said it has more deals ready to sign.

The region had put new deals on hold while it waited for Baghdad to pass a controversial new federal oil law which stipulates who controls the world's third largest oil reserves and how revenue is distributed.

Washington has pushed Iraq for months to speed up its passage and that of other legislation, which it sees as pivotal to reconciling warring Iraqis, rebuilding Iraq's shattered economy and attracting foreign investment.

After months of waiting for Baghdad, the KRG passed its own oil law in August.

The KRG says the PSAs that it has already signed were in line with the constitution and the new oil law. The KRG and Baghdad have clashed over the contracts, and the KRG has said it will review them to ensure their harmony with new laws.

The passing of the oil law was also expected to herald an agreement on export routes for crude from the Kurdish region.

The central government has yet to give the nod to Norwegian operator DNO (DNO.OL: Quote, Profile, Research) to hook its oil output from the Tawke field in the Kurdish region into Iraq's main export pipeline to Turkey.

DNO has already built a link from the Tawke field to the export pipeline. Output from Tawke is limited while DNO awaits permission to export, and the company has been delivering crude to local markets in trucks.

Addax readies $1 bln Iraq Kurdish oilfield plan | Markets | Reuters

Violence hampers Iraqi plans to get lights back on

DUBAI (Reuters) - Iraq hopes to invest $25 billion (12.4 billion pounds) in its electricity industry and almost triple generating capacity over the next decade but is struggling to lure foreign firms amid rampant violence, the electricity minister said on Sunday.

Karim Waheed said Iraq planned to raise installed capacity from 11,120 megawatts now to 28,243 MW by 2015 through the construction or rehabilitation of dozens of power stations.

But attacks on cables, plants and workers, make it hard to repair an already dilapidated grid damaged further in the U.S.-led invasion of 2003 and the ensuing looting and violence.

Waheed's ministry is also working with provincial governors to wrest control of power transmission stations, around half of which are now under the control of militias.

With many of the cables that feed Baghdad down the capital is suffering some of the worst of the power shortages in a country that gets an average 12-16 hours of electricity a day.

"We lost about 1,100 people, engineers and technicians, over the last year, killed or kidnapped because they are working with us," Waheed told a conference on Iraqi energy and power in Dubai. "Baghdad is subjected to big shortages of electricity."

The government drew up an electricity master plan in 2006, which envisages raising per capita power consumption from 980 kilowatt-hours a year now to 3,700 KWh in 2009, which would bring Iraq closer to the regional average.

The plan envisages an end to power cuts by around 2010-2011, providing the government can find the funds to invest in the industry and there is enough oil and gas to fuel the plants.

The budget allocates around $2 billion a year in spending to the power industry over the coming few years, but Waheed said the ministry would have to spend more than twice that amount annually from 2008 to 2010 if it is to meet its targets.

It hopes to make up the shortfall with donations and investment. Iraq is also working on a joint energy and power plan to guarantee enough fuel for the planned plants.

POWER PRIVATISATION

Iraq eventually plans to privatise the entire industry, Waheed said. It is planning to offer the construction of three power plants of no less than 150 MW each to private investors this year for completion by the end of 2008, Waheed said.

One plant will be in the semi-autonomous Kurdish north, which has escaped the worst of the violence gripping Iraq, and two will be in the relatively stable Shi'ite Muslim south.

It also plans to begin privatising existing power stations starting with two plants in Baghdad and one in Kurdistan.

Waheed said the government was mainly dealing with foreign firms, though they largely worked with Iraqi sub-contractors because of the security risks.

"Protecting projects is not the difficult part. Getting companies to invest in Iraq to begin with is difficult ... We are here to encourage investors. I am also going to Europe and the United States," he said.

"We have protection for them but there is only so much we can do. I cannot even protect myself... I have lost my own son."

Violence hampers Iraqi plans to get lights back on - Yahoo! News UK

Iraqi Oil Ministry Rises Price of Fluid Gas

According to a decision by Iraqi ministry of oil which is directed to the Kirkuk Oil Products Directorate, the price of one ton of fluid gas has been raised from 100 thousand ID to 233 thousand ID.

The decision which only includes Kurdistan region led to a halt in distribution of gas containers by the ration agents; therefore, its price will be raised in the markets.

Concerning the decision Sulaimani governorate informed the Kirkuk Oil Products Directorate, but the above-mentioned directory declared that the decision has nothing to do with them and it is related to Iraqi Oil Ministry.

PUKmedia :: English - Iraqi Oil Ministry Rises Price of Fluid Gas

Bad and Cheap Goods Importation is Denied

“The regional government will set facilitates for you and consider your investment as people׳s” said Omar Fattah, the Kurdistan Regional Government deputy in a meeting with Sulaimania merchants. Fattah also asked the merchants to work according to the spirit of nationality and humanity in choosing the quality of goods and its expiry date. The merchants supported the legal investigation with importers who brought expired goods.

In this respect, Abdullah Hajji Saaid, the General Secretary’s assistant for commerce affairs told (Kurdistani New) that the meeting had focused on the duty and work of Kurdistan merchants to do their best for self-promotion as investors, the government assured its support for them as well. Merchants on their behalf requested the locked stores to be opened; the government deputy promised them to solve the problem. Also the importation of bad quality and cheap goods that damage peoples΄ health was denied. In accordance with taxes and customs on merchants, Hajji Saaid said the income tax generally has been decreased, there is no working tax anymore and custom is one percentage.

In the meeting also the citizens’ cooperation was discussed, especially to bring the mineral water in the markets with low costs. In accordance with Shangal victims, he said about 80 million dollars has been collected and an effort is made to meet their needs.

PUKmedia :: English - Bad and Cheap Goods Importation is Denied

Demand for dollar up, exchange rate stable in daily auction

Baghdad, Sept 2, (VOI) - Demand for the dollar was higher in the Iraqi Central Bank’s auction on Sunday, reaching $46.955 million compared with $35.190 million on Thursday.

In its daily statement the bank said it had covered all bids, including $21.015 million in cash and $25.940 in foreign transfers, at an exchange rate of 1,238 dinars per dollar, unchanged for the seventh session running.

The 15 banks that participated in Sunday's session offered to sell $15 million, which the bank bought at an exchange rate of 1,236 dinars per dollar.

Ali al-Yasseri, a trader, told the independent news agency Voices of Iraq (VOI) that the hike in the demand for the dollar was due to the increase in the cash bids while the bids in foreign transfers remained relatively low in today's auction.
The Iraqi Central Bank runs a daily auction from Sunday to Thursday.


Aswat Aliraq

Bush hopes to reward Sunni areas in Iraq aligned with U.S.

President George W. Bush, marshaling his arguments to maintain current troop levels in Iraq, has approved the acceleration of a new program to intensify economic assistance directly to Sunni Arab regions where former insurgents have joined U.S. forces in fighting extremist Sunni groups, senior U.S. officials say.

The move, which has been gathering momentum for several months, was discussed at length Friday at a Pentagon session attended by Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and senior U.S. commanders in Iraq, the officials said.

The shift is focused on Anbar province, once a hotbed of attacks on U.S. forces, where local Sunni militias have now turned against the homegrown insurgent group, Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, and its allies and are increasingly receiving support, within informal "neighborhood watch" groups, directly from U.S. troops.

During Bush's visit to the Pentagon on Friday, he also heard a presentation by General David Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, that appeared to preview much of what he is scheduled to tell Congress when he gives his Iraq progress report in nine days.

But that discussion quickly focused on an issue that Bush and his aides are accused of mishandling after the invasion: making sure that Sunnis are empowered and that they receive a share of the funds that flow from Baghdad, where Shia leaders have seen their moment for revenge against their former oppressors under Saddam Hussein's rule.

Bush and his commanders weighed whether to reward the Sunnis with early provincial elections that would restore a degree of political power to them. But calling elections is no longer within the power of the United States, and the Shiite-dominated national government of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki has long opposed empowering the Sunnis.

They also discussed ways to pressure Maliki to provide millions of dollars in Iraqi funds, much of it oil money, for reconstruction of Anbar's schools and health care centers and the reopening of state-run factories.

"This is all about finding ways to circumvent al-Maliki," said one senior official who is involved in preparing Bush's presentation of a new strategy, which will probably come in an address to the country after Petraeus and the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, Ryan Crocker, have presented their report to Congress starting Sept. 10.

The official added that the White House cannot go to Congress again "and say al-Maliki will perform if we just give him the space. He won't. So you find other means to accomplish the goal."

But circumventing a central government that the United States itself set up is unlikely to prove easy. In the end, it is the new Iraqi government that has control of the country's treasury, and determining when to hold elections around the country is a subject the Iraqi Parliament has not been able to agree upon.

"There is an effort to accelerate the bottom-up reconciliation," said one defense official who declined to speak on the record. "The idea is to capitalize on the unexpected progress made at the provincial level through the Sunni awakening and efforts to work with former insurgents. We are increasing Iraqi and American money being invested in the provinces."

The money would come, the official said, by spending State Department funds through provincial reconstruction teams, which are finally being deployed in significant numbers. Some would come from U.S. military commanders, who have emergency funds at their disposal, and some from a Department of Defense program to generate jobs by revitalizing state-owned industries - a reversal from the privatization begun by U.S. occupation forces four years ago.

The reduction in attacks on Americans in Anbar, according to current and recently departed officials, has fueled a new optimism in the White House that Republican defections from his strategy will be limited, and that Democrats will once again find themselves unable to assemble the votes to cut off funding or force an early withdrawal of troops.

But Bush's argument that Anbar is a locus of progress in Iraq has already drawn fire from Democrats and critics of his war strategy, who say that he is picking out a single tactical accomplishment and ignoring broader strategic failures that have been documented in reports by the intelligence community, the General Accounting Office, and an independent commission examining the Iraqi military and police.

The president is expected to argue that what has happened in Anbar is beginning to be replicated in Diyala province and other corners of Iraq, and that to pull back now - and fail to reward the Sunnis in Anbar - would halt the first significant gains U.S. forces have made against the insurgency in four years.

Harsh words for Rumsfeld

The general who headed the British army during the Iraq invasion said in comments published Saturday that the current unrest there was caused by a U.S. decision to deploy insufficient forces and to scrap diplomats' post-conflict plans.

General Sir Mike Jackson, retired, said former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's approach to the invasion was "intellectually bankrupt" and that his claim that U.S. forces "don't do nation-building" was nonsensical, according to quotes excerpted from his autobiography and published by The Daily Telegraph, the Associated Press reported.

Rumsfeld "refused to deploy enough troops to maintain law and order after the collapse of Saddam's regime, and discarded detailed plans for the post-conflict administration of Iraq that had been drawn up by the U.S. State Department," the newspaper wrote, paraphrasing Jackson.

"All the planning carried out by the State Department went to waste," Jackson wrote. For Rumsfeld and his neo-conservative supporters "it was an ideological article of faith that the coalition soldiers would be accepted as a liberating army."

Jackson, who retired in August 2006 as chief of the general staff, described Rumsfeld as "one of those most responsible for the current situation in Iraq."

Bush hopes to reward Sunni areas in Iraq aligned with U.S. - International Herald Tribune

Howard promises to stand by US in Iraq

Prime Minister John Howard has promised to stand by the United States in terms of Australia's presence in Iraq on the eve of an American reassessment of the recent military surge in the troubled nation.

US President George W Bush will return home early next week from the APEC summit in Sydney to hear a report from General David Petraeus, the US commander in Baghdad.

Mr Howard said Australia should stand by its ally in difficult times.
"It's very difficult times for the US," Mr Howard told reporters in Sydney.

"One of the things that influenced my thinking is the belief that in the difficult time for your major ally, you should deliver as much international support and display as much international solidarity with your most important ally as is most appropriate.

"That's another reason why I don't believe in the reduction of our present forces (in Iraq)."

canberra.yourguide.com.au

Opinion Piece

If Iraq Falls
America might have made a mistake going in, but fleeing would be a disaster.

In contrast to President Bush's dark comparison between Iraq and the bloody aftermath of the Vietnam War last month, there is another, comforting version of the Vietnam analogy that's gained currency among policy makers and pundits. It goes something like this:

After that last helicopter took off from the U.S. embassy in Saigon 32 years ago, the nasty strategic consequences then predicted did not in fact materialize. The "dominoes" did not fall, the Russians and Chinese did not take over, and America remained No. 1 in Southeast Asia and in the world.

But alas, cut-and-run from Iraq will not have the same serendipitous aftermath, because Iraq is not at all like Vietnam.

Unlike Iraq, Vietnam was a peripheral arena of the Cold War. Strategic resources like oil were not at stake, and neither were bases (OK, Moscow obtained access to Da Nang and Cam Ranh Bay for a while). In the global hierarchy of power, Vietnam was a pawn, not a pillar, and the decisive battle lines at the time were drawn in Europe, not in Southeast Asia.

The Middle East, by contrast, was always the "elephant path of history," as Israel's fabled defense minister, Moshe Dayan, put it. Legions of conquerors have marched up and down the Levant, and from Alexander's Macedonia all the way to India. Other prominent visitors were Julius Caesar, Napoleon and the German Wehrmacht.

This is not just ancient history. Today, the Greater Middle East is a cauldron even Macbeth's witches would be terrified to touch. The world's worst political and religious pathologies combine with oil and gas, terrorism and nuclear ambitions.

In short, unlike yesterday's Vietnam, the Greater Middle East (including Turkey) is the central strategic arena of the 21st century, as Europe was in the 20th. This is where three continents--Europe, Asia, and Africa--are joined. So let's take a moment to think about what would happen once that last Blackhawk took off from Baghdad International.


Here is a short list. Iran advances to No. 1, completing its nuclear-arms program undeterred and unhindered. America's cowed Sunni allies--Saudi-Arabia, Jordan, the oil-rich "Gulfies"--are drawn into the Khomeinist orbit.


You might ask: Wouldn't they converge in a mighty anti-Tehran alliance instead? Think again. The local players have never managed to establish a regional balance of power; it was always outsiders--first Britain, then the U.S.--who chastened the malfeasants and blocked anti-Western intruders like Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia.

With the U.S. gone from Iraq, emboldened jihadi forces shift to Afghanistan and turn it again into a bastion of Terror International. Syria reclaims Lebanon, which it has always labeled as a part of "Great Syria." Hezbollah and Hamas, both funded and equipped by Tehran, resume their war against Israel. Russia, extruded from the Middle East by adroit Kissingerian diplomacy in the 1970s, rebuilds its anti-Western alliances. In Iraq, the war escalates, unleashing even more torrents of refugees and provoking outside intervention, if not partition.

Now, let's look beyond the region. The Europeans will be the first to revise their romantic notions of multipolarity, or world governance by committee. For worse than an overbearing, in-your-face America is a weakened and demoralized one. Shall Vladimir Putin's Russia acquire a controlling stake? This ruthlessly revisionist power wants revenge for its post-Gorbachev humiliation, not responsibility.

China with its fabulous riches? The Middle Kingdom is still happily counting its currency surpluses as it pretties up its act for the 2008 Olympics, but watch its next play if the U.S. quits the highest stakes game in Iraq. The message from Beijing might well read: "Move over America, the Western Pacific, as you call it, is our lake."

Europe? It is wealthy, populous and well-ordered. But strategic players those 27 member-states of the E.U. are not. They cannot pacify the Middle East, stop the Iranian bomb or keep Mr. Putin from wielding gas pipelines as tools of "persuasion." When the Europeans did wade into the fray, as in the Balkan wars of the 1990s, they let the U.S. Air Force go first.

Now to the upside. The U.S. may have spent piles of chips foolishly, but it is still the richest player at the global gaming table. In the Bush years, the U.S. may have squandered tons of political capital, but then the rest of the world is not exactly making up for the shortfall.

Nor has the U.S. become a "dispensable nation." That is the most remarkable truth in these trying times. Its enemies from al Qaeda to Iran--and its rivals from Russia to China--can disrupt and defy, but they cannot build and lead.

For all the damage to Washington's reputation, nothing of great import can be achieved without, let alone against, the U.S. Can Moscow and Beijing bring peace to Palestine? Or mend a global financial system battered by the subprime crisis? Where are the central banks of Russia and China?


The Bush presidency will soon be on the way out, but America is not. This truth has recently begun to sink in among the major Democratic contenders. Listen to Hillary Clinton, who would leave "residual forces" to fight terrorism. Or to Barack Obama, who would stay in Iraq with an as-yet-unspecified force. Even the most leftish of them all, John Edwards, would keep troops around to stop genocide in Iraq or to prevent violence from spilling over into the neighborhood. And no wonder, for it might be one of them who will have to deal with the bitter aftermath if the U.S. slinks out of Iraq.


These realists have it right. Withdrawal cannot serve America's interests on the day after tomorrow. Friends and foes will ask: If this superpower doesn't care about the world's central and most dangerous stage--what will it care about?

America's allies will look for insurance elsewhere. And the others will muse: If the police won't stay in this most critical of neighborhoods, why not break a few windows, or just take over? The U.S. as "Gulliver Unbound" may have stumbled during its "unipolar" moment. But as giant with feet of clay, it will do worse: and so will the rest of the world.

Mr. Joffe is publisher-editor of Die Zeit, the German weekly and will be teaching foreign policy at Stanford University this fall. His latest book is "Überpower: The Imperial Temptation of America." (Norton, 2006).

OpinionJournal - Extra

All countries must stay course in Iraq, Bush tells Brown

The first signs of real divisions between George Bush and Gordon Brown over Iraq emerged as the President urged Britain to stay the course in the country.

The American President said: "We need all our coalition partners. I understand that everybody's got their own internal politics. My only point is that whether it be Afghanistan or Iraq, we've got more work to do."
In a Sky News interview, he made clear his irritation with Mr Brown's approach on Iraq. He said Western troops should only think of pulling out once they had completed the "hard work" of defeating al-Qa'ida and Iranian-backed insurgents.

Although Mr Brown has rejected demands to set an exit timetable for the 5,000 British troops in southern Iraq, ministers have said that the decision on their future will be taken independently of Washington. They insist a pull-out of British forces would depend on local conditions in Basra – whatever the plight of US troops in Baghdad.

The Prime Minister is expected to announce next month that Britain will hand over control of security to Iraqi troops and police across the whole of southern Iraq, with British troops switching to "overwatch" status.

President Bush made plain that he wanted to pursue his strategy of a "surge" in troops and wanted his allies to stay the course. The US General David Petraeus, who is in charge of operations in Iraq, is due to unveil his report on the effectiveness of the troop surge on 12 September.

In an interview with Sky News' Australian political editor, Mr Bush warned the country's Labour Party leader, Kevin Rudd – who is favourite to win a general election in October – not to go ahead with his plans for a swift troop withdrawal.

He widened his remarks to include all of America's allies. "What matters is success, and I believe we can be successful. This hard work will achieve what we all want, which is, over time, fewer troops and peace. The main thing we want is to make sure that we deal these radicals and extremists a major blow, which is success in Iraq."

Yesterday, two of Mr Brown's cabinet ministers hit back at claims by the retired American general Jack Keane that the British mission in southern Iraq is failing and that the gradual withdrawal of troops was fuelling the insurgency.

Writing in the Washington Post, David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary, and Des Browne, the Defence Secretary, insisted that Britain was "on track" and defended plans to hand over to the Iraqis.

They stated: "In those southern provinces already transferred to Iraqi control, the political and security authorities have responded robustly to recent intimidation and violence. They have grown in stature and confidence in a way that was impossible while we retained control.

"The United Kingdom is sticking to the mission we took on four years ago. But our commitment to Iraq will not end when our troop movements and the transfer of security control in Basra are complete.

"The international community will need to maintain its support of Iraq for a long time to come, even if the form of that support will evolve over time."

Mr Miliband and Mr Brown insisted there was no anti-government insurgency and very little evidence of an al-Qa'ida presence in southern Iraq, but admitted that intense political competition between longstanding rival Shia movements too often spilt over into violence. "To recognise that such challenges remain is not to accept that our mission in southern Iraq is failing," they wrote.

All countries must stay course in Iraq, Bush tells Brown - Independent Online Edition > Middle East

This isnt news but Im just curious does anyone know if the budget was ever implemnted? I remember in the beginng of the year it was set and agreed upon the amount of dinars to be used in a year for all the sectors of the economy, but they never offically enacted upon to use it. Do I stand correct? Tank