Iraqi Sunni Lands Show New Oil and Gas Promise

[IDemo]

By JAMES GLANZ, New York Times
Published: February 19, 2007

KARABILA, Iraq, Feb. 18 -- In a remote patch of the Anbar desert just 20 miles from the Syrian border, a single blue pillar of flanges and valves sits atop an enormous deposit of oil and natural gas that would be routine in this petroleum-rich country except for one fact: this is Sunni territory.

Huge petroleum deposits have long been known in Iraq’s Kurdish north and Shiite south. But now, Iraq has substantially increased its estimates of the amount of oil and natural gas in deposits on Sunni lands after quietly paying foreign oil companies tens of millions of dollars over the past two years to re-examine old seismic data across the country and retrain Iraqi petroleum engineers.

The development is likely to have significant political effects: the lack of natural resources in the central and western regions where Sunnis hold sway has fed their disenchantment with the nation they once ruled. And it has driven their insistence on a strong central government, one that would collect oil revenues and spread them equitably among the country’s factions, rather than any division of the country along sectarian regional boundaries.

Though Western and Iraqi engineers have always known that there are oil formations beneath Sunni lands, the issue is coming into sharper focus with the new studies, senior Oil Ministry officials said. The question of where the oil reserves are concentrated is taking on still more importance as it appears that negotiators are close to agreement on a long-debated oil law that would regulate how Iraqi and international oil companies would be allowed to develop Iraq’s fields.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/19/world/middleeast/19oilfields.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

[originalpckelly]

1. Well, there goes Iraq.

Now it's definitely going to break up.

[peacetalksforall]

2. Things were stacking up for George and Dick to favor the Shias

and Kurds. I really thought that the main reason we were supporting Shias of Iraq (meaning Shias of Iran) - against Sunnis - was because Sunnis didn't have any oil.

So how do they pipe it?

Within Iraq it means?
Within PNAC-oil-war machine-baron tribes it means?
Within we the people it means?

Does it mean that those (the ones using our kids for corporation guards) have to cut deals with three different countries if they break up?

If all three have oil - we're going to hear some singing for unification?

All those people killed because we concocted and precipitated insurgents will have died in vain?

[Emit]

3. This is really relevant. Thanks for posting.

After reading the article in its entirety, however, I'm still trying to wrap my head around the consequences and future outcomes of this finding. It will be interesting to see the impact of this for the region and for Iraq, on the whole.

One obvious point, however, the implication of which hardly needs pointing out, is this excerpt:

And while it would take years actually to begin pulling gas and oil out of the fields even if the area soon became safe enough for companies to work in, energy corporations have been excited about the area’s potential, even if it falls short of reserves in the Shiite south and Kurdish north.

[Mojorabbit]

4. We will be seeing a change in the news, I'll bet

with a slant not so hard on the Sunnis

[Emit]

5. kick for the morning crowd. n/t