By Simon Kent. Gulf Keystone have announced that the Shaikan field in the Kurdish region of Iraq (KRI) has now exceeded 15 million barrels of commercial production. According to the company, this amounts to a daily average production in excess of 40,000 barrels of oil gross. The oil is trucked to the Turkish border before […]
By Simon Kent. Iraq's Common Seawater Supply Facility, the project originally intended to supply 12 million barrels a day of treated sea water for injection to maintain pressure at oil wells, may be delayed until 2020. Originally scheduled for 2013 after planning began in 2009, the project stalled when Exxon (who had the original contract […]
By Robert Tollast. According to a report in Asharq al Awsat, later re-reported in Britain's Daily Mail and The Times of Israel, 160 US combat troops have been sent to the base of Al Assad in Anbar province. Al Assad is a vast military complex in dangerous, contested territory west of Ramadi, and according to reports, the troops […]
By Simon Kent. The US Department of Defence have released data on Coalition air strikes on ISIS in Iraq and Syria, normally indicative of 24hrs of military activity. Without context, the report reads as a list of different attacks on the terrorists with no apparent meaning other than removing ISIS fighters and equipment from […]
By Simon Kent. Shi'a cleric Moqtada al Sadr has again challenged the media image of himself as a radical "firebrand" by demanding the release of the 17 Turkish construction workers kidnapped in early September. The cleric has long had a reputation for violent anti government, anti-western and sectarian politics, after running the militias the Jaish […]
By Simon Kent. The director of licensing at Iraq's Ministry of Oil, Abdul Mahdy Al-Ameedi, has written a letter to IOCs asking them for conservative spending plans for 2016 in light of the ongoing oil price rout. The low oil prices seen since last year have limited Iraq's ability to pay companies to meet production […]
By Simon Kent. Iraq is planning a 26% rise in exports of Basra Light and Basra Heavy grades of oil, according to data seen by Bloomberg. The targets are 55 cargoes of Basra Light and 26 cargoes of Basra Heavy respectively. This would mean an increase from 90.5 million barrels exported in September, up to 114 […]
By Simon Kent. Iraq's Ministry of Migration has announced that without a surge in extra funding, the country will struggle to accommodate and provide for over 1.5 million Syrian refugees and Iraqi "internally displaced people" (IDPs) both within Iraq and the Kurdish autonomous north. Iraq's refugees are divided with the Kurdish region hosting about 46% […]
By Simon Kent. Kurdish Peshmerga forces have secured 10 villages around the town of Daquq, located not far from the city of Kirkuk in northern Iraq. In the operation--supported by Coalition aircraft--the forces lost 13 men to enemy action, including roadside bombs and "explosive rigged cars." It is another sign that, when supported by air strikes, […]
By Simon Kent. Qatar's ruler, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani, has announced the appointment of an Ambassador and the forthcoming opening of a Qatari embassy in Baghdad. It is a sign of thawing relations between the GCC nation and Iraq, which deteriorated after Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990. Relations did not significantly improve after 2003, […]
By Robert Tollast. Iran will be supplying an extra 10 million cubic metres of gas per day to Iraq under a modification of a deal that originally allowed for 25 million cubic metres per day. This is a continuation of a deal in 2013 where Iran would supply gas to Iraqi power plants, Tasnim news agency reports. […]
By Robert Tollast. A militia group calling itself "Firqat al Mawt" or "Death Division" has released a video (still shown above) of 18 Turkish construction workers who were kidnapped from their living quarters near Sadr City. The men were in Iraq working on the construction of a football stadium, in an area with high unemployment and […]
