Last weekend two stories, one in Al Hayat the other in the Abu Dhabi paper The National, confirmed that Standard Chartered is in talks to take over Warka Bank (BWAI). (There's more on the story here.) While there have been rumors to this effect for over a year, this is the first time anything has […]
Iraq's oil exports for July fell compared to the previous month in volume terms, but revenues rose as average crude prices increased, the oil ministry said on Monday. AFP reports that Iraq exported 67.2 million barrels in July, down from 68.2 million barrels in June Revenues were up, at $7.311 billion, compared to $7.173 billion […]
Iraq's Energy Commission announced on Monday that it has decided to postpone its meeting to discuss the Shell gas contract until next week, further delaying the long-overdue signing. AKnews reports that the commission, headed by Deputy Prime Minister Hussein al-Shahristani, announced last Wednesday that it would discuss the contract to develop and exploit the gas […]
London-based Standard Chartered Bank has been in talks for the past 3-4 months to buy a stake in Warka Bank, one of Iraq's biggest private banks, a central bank official said on Monday. Hassan al-Haidari, a central bank advisor, told Reuters: "They (Standard Chartered) wanted more than 50 percent but they (Warka) wanted (to give) […]
The Kurdistan Regional Government's representation in Washington has launched Invest in Democracy, the KRG's official 2011- 2012 investment guide which outlines the buisness opportunities and investment climate for international companies in the region. The investment guide includes forewords by President Masoud Barzani, Prime Minister Barham Salih, as well as British Foreign Secretary William Hague, US […]
In its interim results for the first half of 2011, oil services company Petrofac gave the following update on its operations at Shell's Majnoon oilfield: "In March 2011, we announced the award of our first contract in Iraq, a US$240 million engineering, procurement and construction management project with Shell. The Majnoon field in southern Iraq […]
Fars News Agency reports that a senior Iranian oil official has announced that the country has worked out an agreement with Iraq to develop joint oil fields along the countries' shared border. The Managing Director of the Iranian Central Oil Fields Company (ICOFC) Mehdi Fakour added, "We are waiting for the Iraqis to be prepared […]
The following article was published by Reidar Visser, an historian of Iraq educated at the University of Oxford and currently based at the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs. It is reproduced here with the author’s permission. Any opinions expressed are those of the author, and do not necessarily reflect the views of Iraq Business News. […]
