Author: alan131210 » Sat Aug 18, 2012 2:29 pm
Kurds Reject Baghdad's Claim that ExxonMobil has Halted Projects in Kurdistan
ERBIL, Kurdistan Region — ExxonMobil, the world’s largest publicly owned oil and gas company, has recently acquired drilling permits from the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG).
In a very short span of time, this has substantially increased the oil output of the Kurdistan Region.
However, the central government claims these permits are illegal as there still is no law on how the revenues are to be distributed. Thus, Baghdad has demanded the contracts be annulled and that foreign enterprises withdraw.
The office of Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister for Energy Hussain Shahristani stated this week that ExxonMobil had halted all projects with the KRG and would retreat from the region as the contracts had been signed without notice to Baghdad. ExxonMobil contradicted this statement by announcing that the Iraqi government had been informed and work would continue.
Tensions between ExxonMobil and Baghdad reached the point that the Iraqi Ministry of Oil sent a complaint to the U.S. government, which as of yet has not proved successful.
Currently, ExxonMobil is active in six locations in the Kurdistan Region. It was the first large oil company to invest in the region, followed by Chevron.
The KRG has issued as many as 50 drilling licenses, all deemed illegal by the central government. Currently, capacity is at 100,000 barrels a day, but is expected to become as high as a million within the next few years as experts estimate the extent of the resources in the region’s soil.
In an interview with Rudaw, geologist Dr. Iamar Xnsi said that there are an estimated 45 billion barrels of oil in the Kurdish territories, accounting for almost 4.5 percent of the earth’s oil resources, which is twice as much as those in the USA.
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