There has been a welcome outbreak of pragmatism in Iraq in recent days.

While the fact that ExxonMobil will apparently be allowed to take part in the auction for the fourth round oil licences was not entirely unexpected, some will see it as a climb down on the part of Baghdad.

Others, such as Hess Corp, which was barred in September as a result of its contracts in Iraqi Kurdistan, will be left in little doubt that some oil companies are more equal than others.

On the party-political front, the return of Iraqiyya deputies to the parliament after several weeks of boycott has generally been seen as a positive, especially with budgets to be finalised.

But this should not lead to any complacency, as tensions between the factions still remain high.

What this all means for the long-awaited hydrocarbon law remains to be seen.

Today we are proud to bring you the 100th edition of our Iraq Business News newsletter, and during that time it has been our pleasure to provide you with essential news and top-class business intelligence.

From a modest start, our newsletter is now read by more than 11,000 people each week, while our website receives over 125,000 visitors every month.

Our readership includes some of the best-informed decision makers in sectors such as energy, infrastructure, security, international development, and investment.

We’d like to thank all our readers, advertisers, expert bloggers, and the contributors to the (often lively) debates in the comments sections of our articles, for making Iraq Business News a ‘must read’ for all who are interested in transformation of Iraq — we couldn’t have done it without you!

Your friends and colleagues might also appreciate receiving our weekly newsletter in their inbox, so why not forward this to them — they can subscribe free of charge by simply clicking here and entering their email addresses.

For detailed advice on doing business in Iraq, please contact Gavin Jones at Upper Quartile and Adrian Shaw at AAIB Insurance – Iraq Insurance.

When Becca Heller, current director and co-founder of the Iraqi Refugee Assistance Project, first met Moustafa in Amman, Jordan in August 2008, he and his brother were the only surviving members of his family. His father and other brother had been kidnapped and tortured. A video of them pleading for their lives was sent to Moustafa and his mother, stating that they would be returned safely in exchange for a hefty ransom payment. Moustafa and his mother, who had no money, and a younger brother with cerebral palsy to take care of, did not have the money to pay the ransom. That was the last anyone heard from Moustafa’s father and older brother. At the time Becca met him, Moustafa was still carrying around the ransom video on a small USB port on his keychain. Moustafa had no food and it was illegal for him to work because he did not have residency in Jordan. He had to somehow obtain medical help for his brother, and he had not seen his mother in three years. His only option was to try to be resettled to a safe third country where he could start over, but he had heard nothing from the United Nations about his resettlement application in over a year.

The Iraqi Refugee Assistance Project (IRAP) is a U.S.-based not-for-profit organization dedicated to providing legal assistance to Iraqi refugees in life and death situations. To date, IRAP has helped resettle more than 1,000 Iraqis identified by the United Nations and numerous other organizations as living in “extremely urgent situations.” After returning to the U.S. from Amman in 2008, Becca co-founded IRAP as a student-driven extracurricular organization at Yale Law School, where she then just beginning her second year. Becca’s vision was to organize law students and lawyers in the U.S. and the Middle East to help Iraqis like Moustafa, who had no choice other than to be resettled, but seemed to have been lost somewhere in the bureaucracy international refugee processing systems.

Currently, around 2.5 million Iraqis remain displaced because of violence. Of these, an estimated 1.5 million are internally displaced inside Iraq, and one million are stuck in limbo in neighboring countries including Syria, Jordan, Lebanon and Egypt. Iraqis in these countries have no rights- they may be deported at any time, it is illegal for them to work, and there is almost no access to health care. Meanwhile, many of the refugees are in dire humanitarian situations for which they cannot receive any assistance.

A spokesman for Iraq’s Ministry of Oil recently told Al Jazeera that unexplored regions of Iraq could yield an additional 100 billion barrels of oil, and that Iraq’s production costs are among the lowest in the world.

Additionally, the report says that only about 2,000 wells have been drilled in Iraq to date, compared with roughly one million wells in Texas alone.

These figures alone give some perspective on the scale of the opportunity facing the country, but as Gavin Jones points out, the political dynamics in Iraq are particularly complicated at the moment, and businesses require a deep understanding of the situation.

Fortunately, as readers of Iraq Businesss News, you will already be well briefed on developments in Iraq; if you need more specific advice on doing business there, you can always contact Gavin Jones at Upper Quartile and Adrian Shaw at AAIB Insurance – Iraq Insurance.

By Gavin Jones, Director of Iraq Business News, and Partner at consultancy firm Upper Quartile. This article was originally published on the Emerging Economics blog. Any opinions expressed are those of the author, and do not necessarily reflect the views of Iraq Business News.

It is very difficult with a market like Iraq to separate current issues, past progress and likely consequences. Since mid-2009 there has been significant achievement and progress, a sustained period of calm which now, sadly, is turning into what will probably be a very violent period as the actions and indecisions running up to the last election start to be resolved.

Let us take a quick look back at what has been achieved by the Iraqi Government:

• Two licence rounds that were very much more transparent than most in Western countries;
• Production has increased from about 2 million barrels of oil a day in 2009 to about 3 million today and is increasing rapidly;
• 14 IOC’s (International Oil Companies) and hundreds of service companies operating in Iraq;
• $43 billion in foreign investment during 2010 with numbers showing about twice that expected in 2011.
• The Central Bank of Iraq has a surplus of $50 billion

The contracts being awarded are massive, but it is not clear to me that many companies are making much in the way of profits in the country because the operating costs are so high. If companies cannot generate earnings commensurate with the risk, they will leave – especially with the price of oil rising quickly.

The oil and gas industry in Iraq has seen a lot of activity in recent days – just look at the following news items:

• Oil Law “Will be Passed Without Iraqiya if Needed”
• GKP Soars on Renewed Bid Rumours
• Genel Energy to Upgrade Tawke Oilfield
• WesternZagros Provides Operational Update
• DNO Completes Merger with RAK
• Gulf Keystone Updates on Kurdistan Operations
• Rumours of Genel Energy Purchase in Chia Surkh
• Najaf Refinery Output Up 30% in 2011

But while the energy sector makes up the lion’s share of Iraqi business, it’s important to remember that it’s not the whole story, and there are opportunities to develop all sectors of the economy.

Whatever sector of the economy your business operates in, Upper Quartile and AAIB Insurance – Iraq Insurance are here to help you. For more information please contact Gavin Jones or Adrian Shaw.

The Iraqi Refugee Assistance Project (IRAP) is a U.S.-based not-for-profit organization dedicated to providing legal assistance to Iraqi refugees in life and death situations. To date, IRAP has helped resettle more than 1,000 Iraqis identified by the United Nations and numerous other organizations as living in “extremely urgent situations.”

Currently, around 2.5 million Iraqis remain displaced because of violence. Of these, an estimated 1.5 million are internally displaced inside Iraq, and one million are stuck in limbo in neighboring countries including Syria, Jordan, Lebanon and Egypt. Iraqis in these countries have no rights- they may be deported at any time, it is illegal for them to work, and there is almost no access to health care. Meanwhile, many of the refugees are in dire humanitarian situations for which they cannot receive any assistance.

IRAP works with the U.N. as well as NGOs and community leaders on the ground to identify Iraqi refugees for whom resettlement to a safe third country is a matter of life or death. Clientele include survivors of torture, single women at risk, children with medical emergencies, religious minorities and families with inter-religious marriages, and Iraqis who are at risk because of their work for the U.S. military or a U.S. company.

For Iraqis who cannot return to Iraq, yet cannot remain legally in their countries of first asylum, resettlement to a safe third country is the only option. Yet the system that identifies and screens refugees for resettlement is often impossibly opaque and difficult to navigate. Refugees must acquiesce to a minimum of 12 hours of interviews, submit pages and pages of documents over the course of up to two or three years. At the end of this process, a decision is made that may literally affect whether the refugee applicant lives or dies – yet traditionally, refugees receive no assistance during the resettlement process to help them make the best case possible, or even to understand what is going on.

IRAP partners with 20 law schools and more than 25 of the world’s major law firms to provide Iraqi refugees in urgent situations seeking resettlement with the free legal help they need to be able to navigate the refugee processing system successfully. It was founded as an all-volunteer student organization at Yale Law School in the Fall of 2008, and became an independent organization in September of 2010. In its first year as national organization, IRAP leveraged a total budget of $126,000 to provide more than $3.5 million in pro bono legal services, allowing the organization to serve hundreds of Iraqi families.

In the coming year, IRAP hopes to double the number of families it serves and increase its staffing on the ground in the Middle East in order to better reach refugees traditionally cut off from social services, such as women who are victims of trafficking or LGBT Iraqis.

To learn more about IRAP and support IRAP’s work, please visit www.refugeerights.org to make a donation.

Having welcomed in a new year, many of us will have hopes and dreams for the twelve months ahead.

And with Iraq in a state of flux following the departure of American troops, the range of possible outcomes for the country is very wide; Iraq has the ability to make 2012 a transformative year, for better or worse.

The momentum in terms of investment and development is still clearly in a positive direction, but it is essential that political wrangling, ethnic disputes and corruption are not allowed to deflect that momentum.

What are your hopes for Iraq in 2012, and what are your predictions for the state of the country one year from now? Whatever your connection with Iraq, we’d love to hear your opinions in the comments section below.

Many readers of Iraq Business News will also be interested in our recently-launched sister publication, Libya Business News, which will issue its first weekly newsletter on Tuesday. As with IBN, the newsletter is free of charge, and you can sign up simply by clicking here adding your email address.