Update on Qara Dagh Exploration Well in Kurdistan
Vast Exploration and Groundstar Resources have issued an update on the drilling progress of the Qara Dagh - 1 Exploration Well. Since the last update on December 13, 2010 the well has been drilled down to 2,522 meters, and over the past several days, an intermediate 9 5/8 inch casing string has been successfully set […]
UK Training Police Forensic Teams in Kurdistan
By UK Embassy in Baghdad: Sometimes red tape is a good thing – not a thing I would normally say or think as a civil servant. Let me explain. One of the best things UK does in Iraqi Kurdistan is train police forensics teams. We have spent a lot of money on it and we […]
Turkish Bank Granted Iraqi Licence
AKnews quotes a source at 'Esh Bank' [Is Bankasi] as saying that the Iraqi Central bank has granted a license to the Turkish group to open branches in the Iraqi capital and the capital of the Iraqi-Kurdistan region. The source, who declined to be named, told the agency that the Turkish bank is now awaiting […]
Central Bank: Educate Public on Paying Taxes
The Central Bank of Iraq (CBI) stated on Thursday that the assumed value of taxs in the 2011 budget is amounted to 2.7 trillion Iraqi dinars, that is 3% of the state budget. Muzher Mouhammed Saleh, the adviser of the ICB, told AKnews that the tax file is semi-disabled in Iraq due to the poor […]
Northern Ireland Completes First Trade Mission to Kurdistan
A delegation of companies from Northern Ireland has just completed its first trade mission to Kurdistan and deemed it an excellent introduction to the region that may lead to business in the future. Seventeen companies from Northern Ireland, which is one of the autonomous regions of the UK, spent five days in Erbil and met […]
Iraq Signs MoU with Japan
The following is the text of the speech from Salar Mohammed Amin, Vice-Chairman of Iraq's National Investment Commission, on the occasion of the signing of the Memorandum of Understanding with Japan: Signing the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) today, we would like to increase the depth of the special relationship between our two countries, and we […]
New College of Education Started in Chamchamal
On Thursday, two Kurdish higher education officials laid the foundation stone of the College of Education in Chamchamal [Chemchemal], 45 km east of the oil rich Kirkuk, 255 km north of Baghdad. The Kurdistan Region’s minister of higher education and scientific research and the president of Sulaimaniya University jointly laid the stone for the $3.4m […]
Wassit Council Urges Boycott of Electricity Bills
The chairman of Wasit [Wassit] council’s media department has said that the council has called on its citizens not to pay their electricity bills because they are too high. The economic commission in the federal Council of Ministers directed the ministry of electricity last year to gradually increase the cost of consumer electricity in order […]
Kurdistan Bolsters Ties with Poland
A delegation representing 15 companies from the Kurdistan Region went to Poland on Thursday to visit an annual business expo in the country. Salah Khidir, the head of the Polish-Iraqi Commerce and Industry Chamber told AKnews that the three-day expo will start on Jan.14. The Kurdish team seeks to boost ties with the host country’s […]
Events, My Dear Boy, Events
When asked what represented the greatest challenge for a statesman, British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan replied: “Events, my dear boy, events”. Fifty years later, the same thought must have gone through the mind of Nouri al-Maliki as he prepared to meet the Kuwaiti Prime Minister, Sheikh Nasser al-Mohammed al-Sabah, in an historic meeting in Baghdad, […]
Eni and BP to Recover Costs at Zubair and Rumaila
Output at Iraq's Zubair oilfield has reached 265,000 bpd compared to baseline production of 184,000 bpd and Italy's Eni and its partners can start to recover investment costs, an oil official said on Wednesday, according to a report from Reuters. The service contracts that Iraq awarded to international oil companies stipulate that the firms start […]
GM Sales in Iraq Up 52% Year-On-Year
General Motors's sales in the Middle East rose 26 per cent in the fourth quarter, compared with the year prior, helped by big gains in Iraq, the company announced on Wednesday. The carmaker sold 123,258 vehicles in the Middle East in 2010, up 5.5 per cent from the previous year, according to a report in […]