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ZAKHO,
Kurdistan-Iraq, Dec 1 (AFP) - 4h37 - A Norwegian
company started drilling for oil this week deep
inside Iraq's Kurdish north, in a move that offers
the Kurds hope of a resource base for their hard-won
autonomy, regardless of the fate of their
decades-old claim to the oil city of Kirkuk.
The ousted regime of Saddam Hussein fought a
ferocious campaign against the Kurds' demand for
Kirkuk to be incorporated in their autonomous
region, expelling tens of thousands of Kurdish
residents to make way for Arab settlers in a bid to
deny them the province's oil wealth.
But the Tawke 1 well being drilled by the DNO oil
company east of Zakho, near the Turkish border, lies
in Dohuk governorate, one of the three far-northern
provinces which the Kurds controlled even before the
overthrow of Saddam Hussein's regime in 2003.
Magne Normann of DNO said the well was of particular
interest because the three prospective reservoirs
were believed to contain high quality light sweet
crude that is easy to refine.
"We can't give any precise figure about the reserves
in this area until we reach the oil," he said,
predicting that it would take around 60 days to hit
oil at a depth of about 3,000 metres (10,000 feet).
The president of the Kurdish autonomous region,
Massoud Barzani, was represented at the project's
launch by his nephew Nigirvan, who described it as
"historic".
"This project will contribute to the growth of the
Kurdish economy and its reconstruction," he said.
"The time when the Kurdish people will no longer be
oppressed and will profit from its own riches has
finally arrived."
Fruit of the first new oil prospecting by a foreign
company in Iraq in more than 20 years, the project
holds out the prospect of a safer and more reliable
source of exports than the Kirkuk fields, where
output is frequently halted by insurgent sabotage.
Still patrolled by Kurdish militiamen, the
overwhelmingly Kurdish Zakho area has been largely
spared the attacks of Sunni Arab insurgents.
But the project also threatens to raise the thorny
issue of who in the new Iraq controls the country's
potentially huge oil wealth.
The production-sharing agreement for the Tawke 1
project was signed with the Kurdish regional
government in June last year.
But a new constitution adopted by referendum in
October gave the federal government in Baghdad
responsibility for managing Iraq's oil resources.
Article 108 states that "oil and gas are the
ownership of all the people of Iraq in all the
regions and governorates."
The following article gives the federal government
responsibility for managing Iraq's oilfields
"provided that it distributes oil and gas revenues
in a fair manner in proportion to the population
distribution in all parts of the country."
The ultimate division of responsibility between
Baghdad and the Kurdish autonomous administration is
likely to affect more than just the Tawke 1 project.
A US-Turkish consortium is to start drilling soon
elsewhere in the three northern provinces, said
Sarbar Horami, of the regional government's oil and
gas commission.
Another contract has been signed with a
British-Portuguese consortium, he added.
AFP
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