18 January 2008 Iraq’s launch last week of a prequalification process for international oil companies ahead of a tender for undeveloped fields has drawn fire from smaller firms, which say the criteria and requirements set by the oil ministry exclude them from the competition and favor their bigger brethren, especially the majors. Oil ministry sources said the prequalification process is designed to determine “which companies could be called on to…
Tag: hydrocarbon law
Sunnis, Shiites Ink Fragile Pact Against Kurds
15 January 2008 Sunni, Shiite and independent lawmakers came together in Baghdad Sunday to sign a pact that, for the first time, issued a collective Sunni-Shiite demand for central control over oil resources and criticized the Kurds for their go-it-alone stance in signing oil deals. Signatories to the statement of common understanding included the political wing of radical Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, the secular Iraqi National List of former Prime…
Iraq: The Sunni Agenda
25 July 2008 Tarek al-Hashemi, the head of the Iraqi Islamic Party, holds the highest Sunni political position in the current political setup as vice president and plays a major role in determining which way Sunni politics go. His most recent achievement is negotiating the return of Sunni ministers to Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s government this week, after a boycott that lasted for almost a year over differences on security…
Iraq: The Shiite View
25 July 2008 Iraqi Shiite Vice President Adel Abdul Mehdi does not disguise his and his party’s ambitions in establishing a semiautonomous region in southern Iraq, home to the country’s most abundant and biggest oil fields, in parallel to the Kurdistan region in northern Iraq, despite Sunni objections and warnings that the move would practically divide Iraq into three mini-states, with the southern region backed by influential Shiite neighbor Iran….