When 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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A trip to Baghdad in 2013 offered the Exxon CEO a taste of the complicated Middle East politics he'll have to navigate if he becomes secretary of state. As CEO of ExxonMobil, Rex Tillerson, President-elect Donald Trump’s pick for secretary of state, had to deal with the antagonism between Iraq's central government and the regional government in the Kurdish north In 2013, Re
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The 2016 OPEC (Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries) meeting in Algiers later this month has received undue importance from market analysts hoping that Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and non-OPEC producer Russia are seeking a freeze on production. Both have been fighting for market share in China, with Saudi Arabia unusually offering large volumes on the spot ma
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In oil-rich northern province of Kirkuk, stand-off remains over Baghdad’s March decision to suspend crude oil exports through Turkey. Beirut - Iraq has maintained record crude oil export levels, registering 3.175 million barrels per day (bpd) in May and June, despite no crude oil exports from Kirkuk through the Turkish port of Ceyhan due to renewed political problems
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Iraq has positively surprised oil majors by starting quickly to repay accumulated debts, the head of Russia's Lukoil said, pledging more investment to allow OPEC's second-largest producer to maintain stellar output growth. Iraq has become the world's fastest-growing oil producer with output up 50 percent since it signed contracts worth tens of billions of dollars with the li
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