| 2008: Talks of new Iraqi Oil Law to resume this week |
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June 22, 2008 Officials from the Iraqi central government and the self-ruled Kurdish region in the north will resume talks this week in Baghdad to try to settle their differences over a proposed new oil law, a Kurdish spokesman said Sunday. Jamal Abdullah, spokesman of the Kurdistan Regional Government, said that the region's prime minister, Nechervan Barzani, arrived in Baghdad on Saturday with "new proposals that could solve the pending issues on the oil law with the central government." Abdullah refused to discuss the proposals but said that they are "flexible enough to settle all the pending issues." Iraqi political factions have been at loggerheads since February 2007 over the law that would set the rules for foreign investment in Iraq's oil industry and determine how oil revenues will be shared among Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds. Other obstacles include a dispute over the rights of regional administrations to negotiate contracts with foreign firms. In the absence of a national law, the Kurds have signed nearly 20 production-sharing contracts with handful of international oil companies since August 2007. Those contracts are considered illegal by the Iraqi Oil Ministry, which has threatened to exclude and blacklist companies that sign deals with the Kurds. The Kurds maintain they are legal. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's office confirmed this week's talks without elaborating. Both sides are expected to discuss an export deal that could add 1 million barrels per day to the market within five years — nearly half of Iraq's current total exports, he added. Baghdad already has opened the door to foreign oil firms by negotiating service contracts with several Western oil companies to boost its current 2.5 million barrels per day by 600,000 barrels. It also plans to announce its first round of tenders to develop several vast oil fields in northern, central and southern Iraq at end of this month. The New York Times reported Thursday that Shell, BP and Exxon Mobil and Total were the four major companies close to signing deals, along with Chevron and some smaller companies. Iraq sits on an estimated 115 billion barrels and it also has an estimated 112 trillion cubic feet of natural gas reserves, according to the ministry. |