Tillerson firm spending billions to drill for oil DUBAI (CNNMoney) - ExxonMobil may have a problem in Iraq. The country is one of seven covered by President Trump's travel ban. And the company is the only American firm still operating under an oil license granted by the Iraqi government. ExxonMobil's presence in Iraq is the work of former CEO Rex Tillerson, now Trump's pic
Read MoreWELCOME TO IRAQ ENERGY FORUM 2017 On behalf of the Iraq Energy Institute it is my pleasure to welcome you to the 3rd Iraq Energy Forum (IEF 2017), taking place in Baghdad, overlooking the River Tigris, at the 5-Star Babylon Hotel, on the 2nd and 3rd of April 2017. With the patronage of the Iraqi Government and the support of H.E. Prime Minister Haider al Abadi and H.E. Oil Mi
Read MoreBeginning in mid-July 2015, the major cities of central and southern Iraq, including the capital Baghdad, have been engulfed by one of the largest social protest movements in modern Iraqi history. The movement erupted spontaneously in the city of Basra, where protests emerged against the deterioration of public services, particularly electricity - at the peak of Basra’s summ
Read MoreTaking it, as Donald Trump has mused about doing, is not only illegal—it would tear the country apart. On his first full day in office, Donald Trump stood before the CIA’s Memorial Wall, which commemorates the agency’s fallen officers, and railed against the media, boasted about the size of his inauguration-ceremony crowd, and took the opportunity to restate his conviction t
Read MoreWhen Ashti Hawrami, the oil minister from Iraq’s largely autonomous Kurdistan region, unfurled a map of untapped oil fields for a team of ExxonMobil officials in the spring of 2011, they saw possibility and profit. The minister pointed to the blocks that had already been taken by other foreign firms as Iraqi Kurdistan, long at odds with the country’s central government over
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