Basra Fight for Oil

Fighting in Iraq’s oil capital Basra isn’t the first bloodshed between varying political and armed groups but may be the decisive battle for control over the oil sector, local government and the fate of the province.
By Iraq Oil Report

The violence that has killed dozens and injured hundreds since Tuesday is billed as Iraq’s military against “criminals, terrorist forces and outlaws,” in the words of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki who this week launched an Iraqi Security Forces offensive into Basra, Ben Lando reports for United Press International.

But political parties and their militias have gained a stronghold in Baghdad and Basra, from elected office to the security forces, police and those protecting the oil infrastructure. And the battle is looking more like two leading political parties against two disenfranchised parties, all Shiite Arab.

“It’s an internal Shiite war for who is going to represent the Shiite community in Iraq,” said Kenneth Katzman, a Middle East expert at the Congressional Research Service. The operation was planned a month ago, he said, and the target was the illegal activity like oil smuggling taking place under the control of the Fadhila Party and other armed groups.

Reidar Visser of the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs writes of “The Enigmatic Second Battle of Basra” on his website Historiae.org.

Read more by AlJazeera and McClatchy Newspapers.

Oil production and exports from Iraq’s southern oilfields could be disrupted in three days if workers cannot reach their offices due to fighting in Basra, a Southern Oil Company official told Reuters on Wednesday.

BHP Billiton’s 13-year quest to gain access to the lucrative Halfayah oilfield in Iraq - the project that dragged the company into the Cole inquiry into the UN oil-for-food scandal - could be realised within a few weeks, Jamie Freed reports for The Sydney Morning Herald.Thamir Ghadhban, the energy adviser to Iraq’s Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki, has said the Government expects to sign a technical support contract covering the Halfayah field and worth about $US500 million ($546 million) by early next month.

Stroytransgaz, one of Russia’s largest engineering and construction companies, and Iraq’s North Oil Company held another round of talks on reconstructing an oil pipeline in Iraq, RIA Novosti reports. The Kirkuk-Baniyas pipeline designed to transport crude from north Iraqi fields to the Syrian port of Baniyas, was destroyed by the U.S. Air Force during an invasion of the Middle East country in 2003.

The Kurdistan Regional Government’s oil ministry is hiring. The Ministry of Natural Resources is looking for to advisers to the ministry itself, as well as to the Kurdistan National Oil Company (KNOC), a Kurdistan Exploration and Production Company (KEPCO), and a Kurdistan Organisation for Downstream Operations (KODO), according to a KRG statement.

A look at Iraq’s editorial pages by UPI’s Hiba Dawood.

A federal investigation of Stuart Bowen, the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction, and his deputy has accelerated, with prosecutors recently questioning seven current and former employees of the office before a grand jury in Richmond, Va., according to sources, Dan Friedman reports for CongressDaily. They said witnesses include a former deputy inspector general and chief of staff, as well as a lower-level information technology specialist, all of whom appeared March 19. Prosecutors in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Virginia, which heads the investigation, and FBI officials assisting the inquiry declined to comment due to the secrecy of grand jury proceedings. But the investigation appears to remain focused on allegations that Bowen, a former White House lawyer who has served in his current post since 2004, and his deputy, Ginger Cruz, illegally read office e-mails of their staff.
##