Thread: Iraq/Dinar News. 09/05 to 01/14/07

والدوليةBush and Merkel looking for a range of economic and international issues

Adviser said German Anguilla Merkel discussed it last night with President Bush in the White House a range of economic and international issues, in a quick round of consultations after the German patrols presidencies of the European Union and the Group of Eight.
.Merkel said that the talks dealt with the situation in Iraq, expressing interest in Germany of evolution of the situation in Iraq to a state of peace and stability assured Iraqis to their fate.

:And President Bush said that he had talked by telephone for about two hours with Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki ascertain whether it has the desire to provide all that is necessary to protect its people. Bush added :
".""I told him : A desire receive assistance from us. I am still in the final stage of sifting consensus to determine my options and the one Sagblha in developing new strategies in Iraq. But it is certain is that I was keen on the task to be clear and specific and viable. "

.The German Adviser Anguilla Merkel had met Thursday evening with President Bush in the White House in the first meeting with an official from the German-Germany's assumption of the presidency of the current session of the European Union and the Group of Eight.
وقد أجرت ميركل .Merkel has held talks with National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley and the American Finance Minister Henry Bolson.

وقال:He said White House spokesman Tony Snow said that the talks will focus on economic construction and building international political Mali. He added : Snow
".""There are a range of topics on the international level, including Israel and Palestine, Syria and Lebanon, and it is clear that the talks will deal with Iran and Afghanistan, in addition to relations with a group of other States."

وأكدبها.The Snow that President Bush is open to discussing the file of energy, especially renewable energy sources and alternative, and it is ready to spend on investments in research.

Translated version of http://www.radiosawa.com/

Was there any report about the big meeting the Minister of the Interior held yesterday?

Al-Dulaimi : Bush had talked strategic balance in institutions

(Voice of Iraq) - 05-01-2007
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Al-Dulaimi : Bush had talked strategic balance in the state's institutions
Baghdad / Nina / sign Adnan Al-Dulaimi, head of the Iraqi Accord Front : "that the new strategic outlook which will be announced to the American president Touzan comprehensive events in all the state's institutions

Kurdish struggle for Iraq's oil


One of the most common sights in Erbil is that of a mountain of jerry-cans stacked by a busy roadside.

As a car draws up, a young man will rush over to the window and be handed a bundle of Iraqi dinars by the driver. In return, a cherry-coloured liquid will be poured in to the car's petrol tank.
Welcome to a petrol station in Iraqi Kurdistan.

Despite sitting on huge reserves of oil, it is still difficult for people of this region to get access to petrol through formal means.

Instead, cars and trucks fill up at these illegal roadside operations.

19-year-old Mustafa, who works at one, says he has to smuggle fuel from Iran because the petrol from domestic refineries is too low grade.

"We buy the Iranian one, which has this red colour," he says.

"It's not legal, of course, and it's expensive. We don't make much profit. We wouldn't be doing this if the government distributed good petrol."

Slow progress

Iraqi Kurdistan suffered decades of repression by Saddam Hussein's regime during which more than 100,000 Kurds are believed to have perished.

After the 1991 Gulf War, it had autonomy but remained isolated. Now, though, it is finally beginning to prosper.

Since the fall of Saddam in 2003, investment has started to flow and the region has had greater access to central government revenue from Baghdad.

And while much of the country is engulfed in violence, life in the Kurdish-administered regions of northern Iraq goes on in relative peace.

However, the Kurds are yet to benefit from the oil reserves beneath their territory - an issue high on the agenda for the Kurdish Regional Government (KRG).

The KRG has tasked foreign experts such as Jerry Kiser, from Kansas in the US, with getting the oil out.

"We've identified lots of opportunities but there's no pipelines or access to market," he says.

"In a country that has vast amounts of reserves proven but none producing, the single highest line-item burden on the government is the importing of fuels.

Mr Kiser argues that progress has been slow because international oil companies are still reluctant to come and work in northern Iraq.

"Lots of people come to meet the minister but nobody is really doing anything," Mr Kiser says.

Currently, only two small foreign operators are working in Kurdistan.

Kirkuk question

Only an hour away from Erbil is the city of Kirkuk, a major oil centre with a majority Kurdish population which is nonetheless outside Iraqi Kurdistan and is therefore under the control of the central government in Baghdad.

Kirkuk's citizens are expected to hold a referendum in 2007 to decide whether to stay with Baghdad or to join the Kurdish-controlled areas.

Should the referendum be in favour of the KRG, then the Kurds should have direct access to one of the biggest oil fields in the country.

The prime minister of Iraqi Kurdistan, Nechirvan Barzani, says that the Kirkuk issue is not just about securing more oil.

"Kirkuk is Kurdish," he says. "No-one can dispute that, but we understand that oil does not belong to just the Kurds. It belongs to everybody in Iraq."

Under Saddam Hussein's regime, he argues, the proceeds of Kurdish oil bought weapons which were used against Kurds.

"For the first time in history the people of Kurdistan, they feel they are part of Iraq. If we are part of Iraq, then they have to give us a fair share of Iraq's oil," Mr Barzani says.

In fact, though, Kirkuk's position could be more difficult to settle.

The city has a large mix of ethnicities, including Arabs, Turkomen, and Assyrians living alongside the Kurds.

It is also extremely violent, with US forces engaged in daily gunfights with local militias.

Its oil installations are attacked regularly and it is costing millions of dollars to repair an oil pipeline that has been blown up.

But Mr Barzani is confident that if it came under Kurdish control, Kirkuk could be secured in a matter of months.

"After the referendum the situation will be totally different. We need some time, maybe one year. We are sure about that, we can bring back security to the area."

Great Game

The Kurds may have their eyes firmly on the oil in neighbouring regions, but there is also an increasing foreign interest in the future of Kurdistan's oil.

Almost every night, a fresh foreign trade mission can be found entertaining local officials in the bar of the city's top hotel.

As well as Americans, there are groups from Europe and the Far East.

But it is Iran and Turkey that seem keenest to gain a foothold.

For Jerry Kiser, it is Iran in particular which has increased its influence in the region in recent months.

The Iranians, he says, are already benefiting from 300,000 barrels a day flowing across the border from southern Iraq thanks to smuggling systems set up by Saddam and still operating.

But on a more long-term basis, he says the country is actively looking for projects and companies to recruit and fund.

"They advise me that they have $1bn to invest in the Iraqi oil sector," he says.

"They have their eyes on lots of cross-border fields. It's a reality that's hard for Americans to swallow. Americans may have been playing chequers, but Iranians are playing chess."

Originally Posted by CharmedPiper

The prime minister's statement -

(Voice of Iraq) - 05-01-2007
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Friday, January 5, 2007

Statement


The Office of the Prime Minister, Mr. Nouri Kamel al-Maliki : Articles in the statement of the Association of Muslim Scholars, absolutely incorrect and is a deliberate subversion and bear the full responsibility for all the work on the issue this excitement.
The Presidency of the Council of Ministers

What??????

Looks familiar, but can't remember if posted.


Inspector General in Ministry of Oil : Oil is the only future bet to raise the standard of living for people
Called for the restoration of the Iraqi National Oil Company law--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Inspector General in the Iraqi Ministry of Oil, Ali Mohsin Al-Allaq, confirmed that recent statistics showed that the average annual income of the Iraqi individual reached 41 dollars, and that 54% of Iraqis spend less than a dollar a day, so oil is the only future bet to raise the quality of life, services and living in this country.

Al-Allaq added in a statement that "Iraq ranks second in the world in oil reserves; it produces about two million barrels per day and exports less, in spite that Iraq needs to increase its revenue to meet the requirements of building, construction and raising the standard of living of citizens and this requires taking a host of measures to boost production and export of crude oil and natural gas. The most important of these measures are: the reinstatement of the Iraqi National Oil Company law because of its positive impact in achieving a better framework for the management of oil activity, the expeditious issuance of the necessary legislation in the management of wealth and investment so as to ensure the entry of specialized international companies in order to expand and develop productive capacities as well as increasing exports within a system that balances between the objectives of the State and investors to achieve better conditions for investment and competition, the provision of a flexible financial system in allocations and funding so as to facilitate the task of completing projects and equipment as well as increasing the rates of production and discharge, providing the necessary protection for oil-sector installations and pipelines after the losses Iraq incurred to and which worth billions of dollars due to suspension of export operations from Kirkuk to Turkey or to the refineries of Iraq, the adoption of modern techniques and following up the developments in the petroleum industry in addition to the replacement of old practices which adopted the continuity of extraction and pumping at the expense of the standards and measurements that maintain and safeguard the wells and fields, finally, the acceleration in implementing the drilling programs and reclamation of old wells as well as repairing, maintaining and protecting the Northern, Southern and Western export systems to achieve the necessary flexibility for export. Al-Allaq also stressed the importance of reviewing in detail the international markets because achieving the maximum benefit and better returns in oil exports can only be done by reconsidering the markets that buy Iraqi oil with the expansion of dealing with the Eastern Market since it achieves better returns. The matter requires the expansion of the activity of research and study in the company of oil marketing through the market research office, which is deactivated currently, in order to provide a database and scientific follow up to the market movement to reach estimates and speculations that serve the purpose of buying and selling. It also requires the investment of gas and to stop wasting burnt gas which forms 60% of gas production; this investment will add an important revenue to Iraq since it will stop the import of liquid gas to meet local demand as well as the real potential of its export.

The procedures that should be implemented in the short term are summarized in: the acceleration of implementing the meters system in all oil locations and the procedures of quantity and quality reconciliation, speeding up the implementation of projects related to the export system at ports and other sites, the development of ports and storage buildings, the provision of advanced trailers, the establishment of a new export line and study the causes of non-implementation of investment plans to increase production and export capacity and work on treating them. It must be stressed here on the need for accountability for the failures that have occurred in this area since the non-implementation was not only due to force majeure, and finally training specialized technical cadres in accordance with global rules to examine the specifications of crude oil in the export ports to contain the risk of manipulation in the accounts of the oil intensity (API) and the amount of water and salts, as each degree of intensity cost 40 cents, as well as putting the amount of water and salts and sediments of the total quantity exported; also the activation of a new foundation for the pricing of crude oil and other products and not to rely on neighboring countries' prices as a primary source in addition to the development of a new mechanism to reduce the fines imposed on the delay of loading ships of crude oil.

Inspector General in Ministry of Oil : Oil is the only future bet to raise the standard of living for people | Iraq Updates

BRIGHT SPOT A Baghdad mailman helps keep the country operating amid the turmoil.

Published: December 31, 2006

SEEMINGLY everything went wrong in this dirty, crumbling and traumatized city in 2006. Thousands of citizens died violently. Daily electrical outages left neighborhoods in the dark. Sewers overflowed. But there is a seldom-discussed indicator of something that went remarkably right in Baghdad and throughout Iraq in 2006: $27.99 billion.

That was the government’s operating budget, dominated by salaries, subsidies for food and fuel and pensions. What went right is that through violence, political turmoil and governmental turnover, nearly all of that money was actually paid to Iraqi citizens.

The same could not be said of the portion of the budget devoted to capital expenditures, known more intuitively as the reconstruction budget. Some Iraqi ministries were able to spend no more than 15 percent of their capital budgets in the face of attacks on employees and work sites and a brain drain of personnel trained to handle contracts and large construction projects.

Somehow money for the salaries made it to the banks and then found its way to millions of employees in a government-dominated economy. If it hadn’t, a state teetering on the edge would certainly have collapsed.

So this is the determinative question for 2007: will Iraq keep paying its salaries? If so, there is at least a wan indication that a few basic ganglia of the national organism are still twitching.

Sinan al-Shabibi, director of the Central Bank of Iraq, says Iraq is likely to stay financially healthy in 2007 because of oil revenues, a large cash reserve and a powerful bank to guard against failures. Only a big run on the local currency or destabilizing flows of cash could cause major problems.

Still, banks are increasingly the targets of heists, and bank executives are being killed and kidnapped. The salaries they pay may be the last canary in the coal mine: the last approximation of stability in an enterprise gone toxic. As salaries go, so goes the last hopes for the new government of Iraq.

Please excuse if previously posted.

Washington (VOA) -- Insurgents often attack Iraq's pipelines and other key oil facilities, leaving them in flames.

The damage is frustrating efforts to rebuild Iraq's crucial oil industry, which is the most important sector of the nation's economy.

Iraq currently produces around two and a half million barrels of oil a day, far below its potential. Iraq's Oil Minister, Hussain al-Shahristani, wants to change that. "Our current plan is to increase production of crude oil over the coming five years to between four and four-and-a-half million barrels per day."
Al-Shahristani says he hopes to quickly make deals with major foreign oil companies, and use their advanced technology to help Iraq reach its huge potential.

But former Iraqi Oil Minister Issam Al-Chalabi says the dangerous security situation has kept all but some small foreign companies out of the country.

"There is no way that any company, any proper company, an international oil company or national oil company or anybody with some sense in his mind would be willing to go into Iraq invest money and develop those services."

Al-Chalabi says major oil companies, like ExxonMobil or Shell, are also discouraged by uncertainties over Iraq's proposed laws governing their industry. The political situation is complicated by the uneven distribution of Iraq's oil.

The bulk of the petroleum is in the southern part of the country, mostly populated by Shi'ites. Some Shi'ite leaders are pressing for autonomy for their region. Another portion of the oil is in northern Iraq where many Kurds live. The area already enjoys considerable autonomy from the central government. The center of the country is thought to contain much less oil and is home to the Sunni Arabs who ruled the nation under Saddam Hussein.

Each of the Iraqi factions is bargaining hard for laws that favor their access to this crucial resource. Iraq's new constitution says the nation's oil belongs to all Iraqis, but the rival factions interpret the document in different ways. Kurds have already signed agreements with small foreign oil companies searching for new oil.

But Iraq's Oil Minister al-Shahristani says such contracts should be signed or approved by the central government. That prompted the Prime Minister of the Kurdistan Region of northern Iraq, Nechirvan Barzani, to threaten to break away from the country. And prompted visiting U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to try to smooth things over with Kurdistan President Massoud Barzani.

"As for the revenues of oil, stipulated in the constitution, we are for a fair distribution of the oil revenues all over Iraq," said the president.

The Kurdish leader did not repeat his colleague's strong rhetoric in public.

Meantime, the Kurdistan regional legislature has been working on a new "Petroleum Law" while the central government has been working on a new "Hydrocarbon Law."

It is not clear if these different pieces of legislation will resolve the dispute between the central government and the Kurdistan regional government, or ease friction over oil between Sunni and Shi'ites in the south.

But an influential study of Iraq by leading U.S. experts [the Iraq Study Group] called an oil law guaranteeing equitable revenue distribution of revenues crucial to national reconciliation. And experts say clarifying the legal status of foreign oil companies will make it easier for Iraq to attract the foreign expertise and technology needed to rebuild the oil industry.

Iraq has opened some new facilities, such as a refinery in Najaf, with ceremony and heavy security. "God willing, this refinery could process 30,000 barrels a day," said an oil engineer at the refinery.

If political disputes are solved and security improved, many experts say Iraq could eventually produce about six million barrels of crude oil per day.

Former oil minister Al-Chalabi says current high oil prices mean a healthy oil industry could bring in $100-billion a year in revenue, enough to easily rebuild the oil sector -- and fund reconstruction of much of the rest of the troubled nation.
By Jim Randle

© 2007, Assyrian International News Agency

They are talking about a boat load of money

Originally Posted by adm

EDITORIAL


Police Storm Sharqiya TV Offices in Baghdad
(Nooozz Editorial) Jan 5 2007

Trade with Turkey Booms Despite Political Strains
(Noozz Editorial) Jan 4 2007

Social Safety Net Offers University Students 15,000 dinar Grant
(Noozz Editorial) Jan 4 2007

BREAKING NEWS


Bush voices regrets on handling of Saddam hanging
(Reuters) Jan 5 2007 2:27

Bush: No peace with Iran developing nuclear arms
(Reuters) Jan 5 2007 0:4

Bush says to outline new Iraq policy next week
(Reuters) Jan 5 2007 0:2

So the Social Safety Net is basically offering to loan the students enough
money to buy lunch for a day or two, that is about all they can get for $10 or $12 bucks isn't it.
It sure looks to me like our reval is about to occur!


Lewscrew

Again if already posted, please excuse. thank you.

A test oil well in northern Iraq produced 8,500 barrels per day (bpd), the most of three wells tested in the first post-war drilling by a foreign firm, Norwegian oil company DNO said yesterday.
"We are very pleased with the well and how the project is progressing," DNO managing director Helge Eide said of the results from the Tawke number 4 well.
Two previous tests of the field had produced flow rates of about 5,000 and 4,000 barrels per day, he said.

The wells could be put into production during the first quarter of 2007, as soon as a processing plant is ready.

DNO is the first western company drilling for oil in post-war Iraq under a 2004 deal with the Kurdistan regional authorities. It is uncertain, however, how far the deal will be respected by the central authorities in Baghdad.

The company said that drilling of the Tawke 4 well began on December 14 and that the test was via a 2-inch choke.

Oil samples confirmed similar quality of crude as produced in tests of Tawke wells 1/1A and 2.

The drilling rig would be moved about 1.1km east to drill a new well.

Source: Gulf Daily News