Iraqi Kurds sign four oil deals

[IndianaGreen]

Source: BBC News

Iraqi Kurds sign four oil deals
By Mark Gregory
BBC News

The Kurdish regional government in northern Iraq has announced four new oil exploration deals with international energy companies.

The news is likely to upset the central government in Baghdad and the US.

Both have been pressing the Kurds to hold off negotiations until national oil and gas laws for opening up Iraq's energy wealth are in place.

<snip>

French and Canadian companies are involved along with other foreign investors that have not yet been named.

<snip>

A few weeks ago the Kurdish government signed agreed its first ever exploration deal with a foreign oil firm, Hunt Oil from Texas.


Read more: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7027249.stm

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Neither the Shia nor the Sunni will allow the Kurds to get away with this, or with independence.

[MADem]

1. The Kurds have the best of all worlds. Autonomy, a stable, productive region,

a new US base close at hand, and it's a simple matter to secure those Kirkuk fields. Wonder who the players to be named later are?

This sounds like a game of nudging the process along. They want to start making money, now.

[IndianaGreen]

3. We wouldn't tolerate an ethnic group allying itself with a foreign invader

that then engaged in business deals with foreign corporations in which national resources that belonged to all Americans were sold to benefit only them.

Iraqis won't tolerate Kurdish insolence much longer.

[MADem]

4. Those Kurds have never viewed themselves as an "ethnic group" though.

They regard themselves as a lost nation, put down by western powers who drew lines on a map to create what we see now in the ME out of the Ottoman Empire. And they're right.

And the Iraqi government gave them autonomy during the Saddam era. See, they aren't ARABS. They're indo-European. They ARE different.

Iraqis don't have their shit together at all--they're busy talking about Federalism and the Biden Three-Way Split now--the Kurds are smart. They're striking while the iron is hot. They're the only ones who are in a position to make deals and carry through with them. They have the infrastructure, and they have certainly had experience. They've been doing this autonomy thing for some time, now.

Don't forget, Iran's PRESIDENT (largely a figurehead, like Iran's--but still) is a KURD.

[IndianaGreen]

5. That's the sort of logic that led the UN to transplant a bunch of European refugees

to the Middle East. Look at the mess it created!

[HuffleClaw]

2. so i guess that means they'll be labelled as terrorists soon?

bushco. is not gonna let anyone else get their hands on 'their' oil.