Word: oiled
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...Iraq's industry has gone to seed in the decades of war and sanctions, as well as the expulsion of foreign oil companies by Saddam Hussein in 1972. But its potential remains massive, especially when compared with the dwindling reserves of the North Sea, the fact that most Middle Eastern fields are already being pumped, and that new deposits elsewhere offshore and in the Arctic are remote and expensive to develop...
...tempting for companies to miss having a foothold in Iraq," says Tariq Shafiq, director of the London oil consultancy PetroLog & Associates, and a previous executive director of Iraq's National Oil Company who helped to draft Iraq's new national oil law after the US invasion in 2003. "Where else would any company go today to have access to a field that produces two million barrels per day? There is none...
...Presented with an opportunity this week to claim that foothold, however, most major oil companies were unwilling to commit. The need for military style security and expansive insurance in light of ongoing terror attacks would require foreign investors to add millions to the cost of operating in Iraq. Massive capital investment is required to develop the industry's capacity in Iraq, and militant trade unions that have flexed their muscles through strikes in recent years - and which bitterly oppose foreign oil companies taking charge of developing Iraq's fields - add to the headache facing potential investors...
...political climate necessarily conducive to Big Oil setting up shop in Iraq. The country's parliament has thus far refused to ratify the government's national oil law - drafted under the strong influence of U.S. officials - which would allow international oil companies to acquire an ownership stake in the mammoth reserves...
...Iraq's Arab-Kurd political conflict also directly affects oil investment in the three semi-autonomous Kurdish provinces in the North. Since 2006 the Kurdistan Regional Government has signed about 20 deals with small oil companies, and have begun exporting oil during the past year - the only new oil fields developed in Iraq in decades -. That violated the Iraqi government's decrees that such contracts, which bypassed Baghdad, are illegal...