Thread: The fight is still about OIL

Kurd Oil Supply Seen Growing as Region Grabs Territory

By Nayla Razzouk, Anthony DiPaola and Rupert Rowling June 17, 2014

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Iraq’s Kurdish region may be able to gain more autonomy and increase crude exports after taking control of territory around the nation’s fourth-largest oil field, analysts from Saxo Bank A/S and JBC Energy GmbH said.

Kurdish troops are protecting the Kirkuk oilfield and surrounding areas after an offensive by Islamist insurgents last week prompted Iraqi central-government forces to flee. The Kurdistan Regional Government plans to double its crude exports next month to as much as 250,000 barrels a day and has built a new pipeline that could ship Kirkuk oil to international markets, Ashti Hawrami, KRG’s natural resources minister, said at a conference in London today.

“The current situation could lead to a better environment for exports if the Kurdish region gets more autonomy and can ship its oil, and the south of Iraq continues to grow,” David Wech, managing director at JBC Energy GmbH in Vienna, said yesterday by phone.

STORY: A Violent End to Iraq's Brief Economic Rebound

Iraq’s central government in Baghdad and the Kurds have been in a dispute over oil revenue and territory for years, including disagreements about Kirkuk. Tensions increased last month when the Kurds started to export crude to Turkey through their own pipeline without approval from Baghdad. Two tankers have loaded cargoes of crude from the Kurdish region on Turkey’s Mediterranean coast.

Two more tankers will load oil exported from the Kurdish region at the Turkish port of Ceyhan this week, Hawrami said yesterday at the Iraq Petroleum Conference in London. The region will raise exports to 200,000 to 250,000 barrels a day in July, from 125,000 now, he said.

Daily shipments may increase to 400,000 barrels by the end of the year, he said.

STORY: As Iraq Burns, Kurds Try (and Fail) to Sell More Crude
Heading for Independence

“The central government has tried to halt exports from the region, but it is weak and the Kurdish north could potentially be heading for independence,” Ole Hansen, head of commodity strategy at Saxo Bank A/S in Copenhagen, said by e-mail. “It could potentially mean increased supply from a region that has been relatively stable.”

Exports of Basrah Light crude, southern Iraq’s main grade, may reach about 2.8 million barrels a day next month, according to a preliminary loading plan obtained by Bloomberg News June 16.

Current Kurdish exports are not big enough to make a difference to global oil markets “compared with what’s coming out of Basrah in the south, but political stability there could attract renewed investment and increase the effort to produce more,” Hansen said.

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The Kurdistan Regional Government controls 45 billion barrels of oil reserves and has attracted international oil companies including Exxon Mobil Corp. (XOM:US)and Total SA (FP) with financial terms many investors see as more generous than those available in the rest of the country.

Kirkuk Pipeline

Kirkuk contains 8.9 billion barrels of crude reserves, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The field and surrounding area is producing 300,000 barrels a day of crude, down from 650,000 to 700,000 before March 2, when the export pipeline to Ceyhan was sabotaged, according to a statement from state-run North Oil Co. yesterday.

The government in Baghdad has declined an offer to export oil from the Kirkuk area to Turkey through a separate pipeline controlled by the Kurdish government, Hawrami said in London yesterday. The recently completed link could ship as much as 1 million barrels a day of oil from northern Iraq, including 325,000 barrels a day of Kirkuk crude, by connecting the area to an existing pipeline that runs through Kurdish territory, he said.

VIDEO: Oil Seen to Fall If Iraqi Fighting Doesn't Worsen

To contact the reporters on this story: Nayla Razzouk in Dubai at nrazzouk2@bloomberg.net; Anthony DiPaola in Dubai at adipaola@bloomberg.net; Rupert Rowling in London at rrowling@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Alaric Nightingale at anightingal1@bloomberg.net James Herron, Rachel Graham

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http://www.businessweek.com/news/201...autonomy-grows

A Kurdish Army Has Taken Kirkuk, Not A Shot Fired

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Militants, Iraq security forces clash at country's largest oil refinery Fox News - ‎12 minutes ago‎ Oct. 6, 2003: In this file photo, an oil refinery is seen in the city of Beiji, home to Iraq's largest oil refinery. (AP). An official at Iraq's largest domestic oil refinery says Sunni militants have taken over 75 percent of the facility following clashes with Iraqi security ...

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  BATTLE TO CONTROL IRAQ OIL
  Fierce fight reported at main refinery
  
  RADICAL JIHADIST FORCES of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) reportedly are in pitched battle with Iraqi government forces for control of the giant Beiji oil refinery (above), with reports the militants control up to 75 percent of the facility.
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ISIS militant group takes control of Syria's largest oil field

Published July 03, 2014 FoxNews.com

June 30, 2014: Militant Islamist fighters waving flags, travel in vehicles as they take part in a military parade along the streets of Syria's northern Raqqa province. The fighters held the parade to celebrate their declaration of an Islamic "caliphate" after the group captured territory in nearby Iraq, a monitoring service said.Reuters


ISIS, the jihadist terrorist group that has seized a huge swath of land stretching from Syria to Iraq, has taken control of Syria's largest oil field from another terrorist group with ties to Al Qaeda.

The terrorist group which fought side-by-side with Syrian rebels and the Al Nusra Front to topple Syria's government until the alliance imploded, now controls Al-Omar, in Syria's eastern Deir Ezzor province, according to the opposition group Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. Control of Syria's most productive oil field could be a potentially valuable resource for funding its terror operations and the Islamic caliphate is claims to have established.
“We took it (the oil field) over without any fighting," a purported commander of the Islamic States of Iraq and Syria/Levant said on a YouTube video released by ISIS supporters. "They fled like rats.”

Led by an ambitious Iraqi militant Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, ISIS this week unilaterally declared the establishment of an Islamic state, or caliphate, in the lands it has seized in Syria and Iraq. It proclaimed al-Baghdadi the head of its new self-styled state and demanded that all Muslims pledge allegiance to him.

Prior to the civil war, which broke out in March, 2011, the oil field produced some 30,000 barrels a day. Last November, Al-Nusra Front and its anti-regime allies seized the field and kept production at an estimated 10,000 barrels a day, according to the Observatory. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, Syria's oil production has declined dramatically - to an estimated 25,000 barrels per day from more than 400,000 - because of the conflict and subsequent Western-imposed sanctions.

The majority of significant Syrian rebel groups that have been fighting to overthrow President Bashar Assad have rejected Baghdadi's declaration.

Rebel groups, including Al Nusra Front, have fought the extremist group since the beginning of the year with nearly 7,000 fighters killed.

ISIS -- which controls large parts of northern Syria and captured vast swaths of northern and western Iraq last month -- is now in almost full control of a corridor stretching from the Syrian border town of Boukamal to the government-controlled provincial capital of Deir el-Zour to the northwest.

On Monday, militants paraded military hardware – including vehicle-towed artillery, tanks, Humvees and a missile – through the streets of Raqqa, the only Syrian provincial capital that is outside of Assad’s rule, according to Reuters.

In the northern Syrian province of Aleppo, ISIS fighters have launched an offensive against Syrian rebel groups. The militants are also battling east of Damascus, Reuters reports. The new developments effectively expand and consolidate areas held by the group -- which has shorted its name to the Islamic State -- in territory straddling the border between the two conflict-ridden countries of Syria and Iraq.

However, Nusra Front appears to be losing the war within a war in Syria as fighters allied with powerful tribes in eastern Syria defect to al-Baghdadi's group.

On Thursday, a video posted online by activists showed a man in the town of Sheheil, a Nusra Front stronghold, reading a statement, saying: "We have decided to declare our allegiance to the Islamic State and the Caliph of the Muslims, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi."

Another video showed what appeared to be fighters in the nearby Ishara village announcing that they were ceasing their fight against the Islamic States of Iraq and Syria/Levant.

"The clans of the city of Ishara, and the villages around it ... and all of the factions in these areas ... announce before God that they will cease fighting with the Islamic State," a man says, reading from a statement as he stands in a courtyard with several other tribal elders. The videos appeared to be genuine and matched AP reporting from the area.

The Deir el-Zour Coordination Committees, a collective of activists in the area, confirmed that militants had entered the town of Mayadeen and Ishara after other rebel fighters withdrew.

Rami Abdurrahman, director of the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said some Nusra fighters were still clashing with their rivals at the outskirts of Sheheil Thursday, but added that the Al Qaeda-linked group appears close to collapse.

Led by a Syrian known as Abu Muhammed al-Golani, the Nusra Front is Al Qaeda's official branch in Syria and was declared a terrorist group by the United States. Its fighters have been one of the most effective forces against Assad's troops, and have carried out suicide bombings targeting government forces in Syria's major cities, including the capital Damascus.

Meanwhile, Sunni militants Thursday released 32 Turkish truck drivers who were captured during a lightning offensive across northern and western Iraq last month, Turkey's foreign minister said.

Speaking to reporters in Ankara, Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said the truckers were heading toward Irbil, the capital of the semi-autonomous Kurdish region of northern Iraq, and would be flown later to Ankara.

The drivers were well, although one may need special treatment, he added, without elaborating or giving any details about their release.

Militants from ISIS seized them June 9 in Mosul, Iraq's second-largest city. Three days later, they took another 49 people from the Turkish consulate in the city.

Davutoglu said efforts were underway to secure the release of the Turks still in captivity.

http://www.foxnews.com/world/2014/07...est-oil-field/

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  ISIS NOW CONTROLS seven oil fields and two small refineries in northern Iraq, bringing in as much as $2 million per day, as experts warn that the oil flow will continue translating into terror funds for militants if unchecked...

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http://www.alipac.us/f19/islamic-sta...urplus-310776/