|
A Norwegian company begins
drilling in the north without approval from Baghdad.
BAGHDAD - A controversial oil exploration
deal between Iraq's autonomy-minded Kurds and a
Norwegian company got underway this week without the
approval of the central government here, raising a
potentially explosive issue at a time of heightened
ethnic and sectarian tensions.
The Kurdistan Democratic Party, which controls a
portion of the semiautonomous Kurdish enclave in
northern Iraq, last year quietly signed a deal with
Norway's DNO to drill for oil near the border city
of Zakho. Iraqi and company officials describe the
agreement as the first involving new exploration in
Iraq since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003.
Drilling began after a ceremony Tuesday, during
which Nechirvan Barzani, prime minister of the
Kurdish northern region, vowed "there is no way
Kurdistan would accept that the central government
will control our resources," according to news
agency reports.
In Baghdad, political leaders on Wednesday reacted
to the deal with astonishment.
"We need to figure out if this is allowed in the
constitution," said Adnan Ali Kadhimi, an advisor to
Prime Minister Ibrahim Jafari. "Nobody has mentioned
it. It has not come up among the government
ministers' council. It has not been on their
agenda."
The start of drilling, called "spudding" in the oil
business, is sure to be worrisome to Iraq's Sunni
Arab minority. They fear a disintegration of Iraq
into separate ethnic and religious cantons if
regions begin to cut energy deals with foreign
companies and governments. Sunnis are concentrated
in Iraq's most oil-poor region.
Iraq's neighbors also fear the possibility of Iraqi
Kurds using revenue generated by oil wells to fund
an independent state that might lead the roughly 20
million Kurds living in Turkey, Iran and Syria to
revolt.
Iraqi legal experts and international oil industry
analysts have questioned the deal. Oil industry
trade journals had expressed doubts that it would
come to fruition.
Iraq's draft constitution, approved in an Oct. 15
national referendum, stipulates that "the federal
government with the producing regional and
governorate governments shall together formulate"
energy policy. However, it also makes ambiguous
reference to providing compensation for "damaged
regions that were unjustly deprived by the former
regime."
Iraq's Kurds have argued that the country's existing
oil fields and infrastructure, such as those in the
largely Kurdish cities of Kirkuk and Khanaqin,
should be divvied up by the central government but
that future oil discoveries should be controlled by
each oil-producing region.
In his speech Tuesday, Barzani, the nephew of
Kurdish politician and former guerrilla leader
Massoud Barzani, eschewed the language of the law
and couched the deal in political terms. He invoked
the Kurds' years of deprivation at the hands of the
Sunni Arab-dominated government of Saddam Hussein.
"The time has come that instead of suffering, the
people of Kurdistan will benefit from the fortunes
and resources of their country," he said during the
ceremony in the western portion of
Kurdish-controlled territory.
The Kurds, who during the last several years of
Hussein's rule maintained sovereignty in northern
Iraq under the protection of U.S. warplanes, made
millions in transit and customs fees as the Baghdad
government smuggled oil to Turkey in violation of
United Nations sanctions. Since the end of the
sanctions, the Kurds have sought ways to make up for
that lost income.
The eastern administrative half of the Kurdish
region also is rushing to sign energy deals with
foreign companies without Baghdad's approval. The
government of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan,
based in the city of Sulaymaniya, has signed an
electricity agreement with a Turkish company and
explored a possible oil deal with a foreign
partnership near the city of Chamchamal, the site of
several dormant oil wells.
During months of painstaking constitutional
negotiations, Kurds insisted on the authority to cut
energy deals without Baghdad's approval. Under the
draft charter, the task of determining how oil
resources will be allocated is left to the National
Assembly that will be elected Dec. 15.
The language in the constitution regarding the power
of regions to pen such contracts was a major reason
that the vast majority of Sunnis voted against the
charter in October.
The announcement of the DNO drilling took many
Iraqis by surprise Wednesday.
"This is unprecedented," said Alaa Makki, a leader
of the Iraqi Islamic Party, a Sunni Arab group.
"It's like they are an independent country. This is
Iraqi oil and should be shared with all the Iraqi
partners."
Makki said Kurds were trying to have it both ways,
controlling the Iraqi presidency and several
powerful ministries in the national government while
also trying to lay claim to extra-constitutional
powers in the north. Jalal Talabani, a Kurd, is the
Iraqi president.
However, Helge Eide, managing director of Oslo-based
DNO, said he believed Iraq's new constitution gave
the Kurdish north jurisdiction over certain drilling
and oil exploration activities.
"That was clearly pointed out by Mr. [Nechirvan]
Barzani," said Eide, who attended the Zakho
ceremony.
Oil companies have become used to operating in
hostile and unstable territories. DNO, founded 25
years ago, is considered an upstart in the oil
business, with projects in Yemen, Mozambique and
Equatorial Guinea, the site of a coup attempt last
year, as well as northern Europe.
Eide said his company was more than willing to work
with the government in Baghdad, though it had not
yet signed a deal with the capital for oil
exploration. In April, the company signed a deal to
provide the Iraqi Oil Ministry with training and
technology as "the first steps" to being invited by
Baghdad, as well as the Irbil-based Kurdish
government, for future oil and exploration work.
Iraq, a member of the Organization of the Petroleum
Exporting Countries, holds an estimated 115 billion
barrels of proven oil reserves, mainly in the south,
according to Oil & Gas Journal, an industry
publication.
That places Iraq among the top five nations in oil
reserves. Iraq could contain significantly more
undiscovered oil where energy exploration hasn't
occurred, an area that stretches across about 90% of
the country, the U.S. Energy Department said.
Iraq exports about 2 million barrels of oil a day,
according to the International Energy Agency in
Paris.
www.latimes.com
Top |
® 