-
India's PFC inks pact with Exim Bank
Published: May 16, 2008 at 12:31 PM
NEW DELHI, May 16 (UPI) -- India's Power Finance Corp. has signed an agreement with U.S. Exim Bank to receive an $800 million loan. -
India Oil to shelve refinery proposal
Published: May 16, 2008 at 12:09 PM
NEW DELHI, May 16 (UPI) -- State-run Indian Oil Corp. is contemplating shelving its 15 million-ton greenfield refinery in southern Tamil Nadu state. -
India won't cut duty on oil imports
Published: May 15, 2008 at 9:40 PM
NEW DELHI, May 15 (UPI) -- Indian Finance Minister P. Chidambaram said there will be no reduction in the duty charged on imported oil, despite soaring energy prices.
-
Fall River fights five-year battle against LNG facility
Published: May 16, 2008 at 10:18 AM
By JOHN C.K. DALY
UPI International Correspondent
WASHINGTON, May 16 (UPI) -- A five-year struggle continues between Fall River, Mass., residents and Weaver's Cove Energy LLC over a proposed LNG facility. While the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission approved the project, the Coast Guard opposes it as an unacceptable safety risk. -
UPI Energy Watch
Published: May 15, 2008 at 12:19 PM
OPEC cuts estimate of growth in world oil demand for 2008; The United Arab Emirates' crude oil output increased last month; Philippine government may cut taxes on oil and gas -
Nigerian militants attack oil vessel
Published: May 15, 2008 at 11:10 AM
By CARMEN GENTILE
UPI Energy Correspondent
Jimmy Carter and Barack Obama have called for a resolution to the conflict between rebels intent on crippling Nigeria's petroleum industry and government officials. -
Mongolia, coal and inflation
Published: May 14, 2008 at 7:56 PM
By JOHN C.K. DALY
UPI International Correspondent
WASHINGTON, May 14 (UPI) -- Rising fuel and food costs are hitting Mongolia hard, with foreign investors exploiting the situation to pressure the country to open up its economy. Given the country's political isolation, sandwiched between China and Russia, its two major trading partners, Ulaanbaatar is being held over the proverbial barrel in negotiations with its giant neighbors, leaving its population of 2.9 million nervously awaiting further aftershocks from rising inflation. -
Congress blocks administration from stockpiling oil
Published: May 14, 2008 at 7:28 PM
By ROSALIE WESTENSKOW
UPI Correspondent
WASHINGTON, May 14 (UPI) -- Faced with growing pressure to decrease gas prices, U.S. senators voted to stop stockpiling oil in the national reserve yesterday, but they rejected a plan to increase domestic production. -
UPI Energy Watch
Published: May 14, 2008 at 3:47 PM
IEA: Developing nations cause high oil prices; New oil, gas fields will add to Indonesia supply; Australia says oil, gas tax breaks to go
Latest Headlines
- Sugarland to release third studio album
- Bus group wants 'gentler' female drivers
- Man claimed real benefits for fake kids
- Obama hits back at Bush, McCain
- London to get Ripley's museum
- Feature: U.S. cites attacks despite truce
- New clean air rules may endanger parks
- Scientist: Smiling can hurt your health
Most Popular
Analysis: Deeper than an oil law in Iraq
Published: Sept. 10, 2007 at 12:01 PM
By BEN LANDO
UPI Energy Editor
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates, Sept. 10 (UPI) -- Both Iraq’s federal government and the Kurdistan Regional Government are upset by each other’s efforts in reaching a deal on a national oil and gas law and have announced moves to develop the oil sector without it.
Neither has given up, however, on the hydrocarbons law, a tool that will both govern development of resources that bring in nearly all the government’s revenue and allow various factions to air their wants and find a compromise.
“If for any political reason the law is delayed, we’ll go ahead and start discussions with international oil companies,” Iraqi Oil Minister Hussain al-Shahristani said Saturday at an Iraq oil conference in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.
On Sunday, on the sidelines of the Iraq Petroleum 2007 summit, organized by The CWC Group, he said tenders for projects in Iraq’s vast oil and gas sector “will be announced in due time.” He didn’t say exactly which fields or exploration blocks, but they are included in the first phase of a five-year plan he outlined over the weekend, he said.
“The Ministry of Oil is entitled to sign any contract that is for the best benefit to the country,” he said. The government has been holding out for the federal law, but it appears pressure is wearing the patience thin.
The same goes for the KRG, which on Saturday announced it signed a production-sharing contract with an Iraqi-based subsidiary of Hunt Oil Co. of Dallas and Impulse Energy Corp.
“Any contract that has been signed by anybody other than the Ministry of Oil now before the new law is legislated has no standing as far as the government of Iraq is concerned,” Shahristani said Sunday of the deal. The KRG has signed a handful of oil and gas exploration and development deals with private firms, all of which have been condemned by Baghdad.
Shahristani said only the first four deals, struck prior to reaching agreement on a federal oil law, would carry any water with him. They would be reviewed by a federal oil and gas council established by the law to ensure they comply with it.
“We are not really looking for any blessing from others because we don’t need any of it,” KRG Natural Resources Minister Ashti Hawrami said in a telephone interview from Iraq. “Instead of undermining KRG’s achievements we would like to encourage others to work with us on the federal law to make some real progress in all the country.”
Without a new federal oil law, which has been in negotiations for more than a year, Iraq relies on legislation instated in the 1980s, which Shahristani says gives him the right to sign new deals. Hawrami said the 2005 constitution gives the Kurdistan region the right to pass its own oil law, which it did last month, and sign deals as well.
“Our recently enacted regional oil and gas law has nullified any other law before it. That is our constitutional right and we have done that,” he said, adding more deals are in the pipeline. “But, that only applies to the Kurdistan region, and the rest of Iraq is still governed by the old laws.”
The debate is more complex than merely negotiating laws and interpreting a constitution. There are layers of mistrust and fear fomented by decades of violent, strongman power wielded mostly along sectarian lines by Saddam Hussein. Such tension has been exacerbated by the past four plus years of an occupation that sought to use sectarian categories or roles to bring a slice of power to Iraq’s Shiite and Sunni Arabs and Kurds. But succeeding in being inclusive, the new form of government is also fractured along such identities.
The oil law, in turn, is not simply legislation governing the third-largest proven reserves of oil in the world. Oil sales funded more than 90 percent of government last year, so the oil is a base for power in Iraq. Agreeing on how to share and/or divvy that power (the extent of federalism in the new Iraq) and best develop the crude source of the power (the extent international investors can enter the longtime nationalized oil sector) is a litmus test.
The Bush administration and Congress included passage of an oil law as a benchmark for Iraq’s government (although the benchmark language referred to an oil law that decides how the oil revenue is to be shared, which will be decided in a separate revenue-sharing law). They said passing the law would lead to reconciliation.
As negotiations over the law turn tense, widening the gap between political players and creating the real or perceived need for unilateralism, it appears the law itself could be the proving ground for intra-Iraqi cooperation. It’s a decisive and divisive issue for Iraq, suffering from daily violence and a dwindling quality of life; it may not fit in an occupying power's cynical timeframe.
Indeed, backroom talks have seen successes. But soon after surfacing, deals break down or are found to be incomplete. In February an agreement was announced, but now neither the Kurds nor the central government can agree on changes each side wants or has made. Both still say they want to find a solution. That’s a feat considering the pressure being applied not only by the United States, other governments and institutions like the International Monetary Fund, but internally as well.
The Iraqi government is becoming weaker every day citizens experience long hours without electricity, long lines for fuel and hopes of restored healthcare, water, sewage and education systems. That, along with the violence, is spurring fighting between parties, even those allied by ethnicity or religion.
The oil unions in the south are so worried they’ll lose jobs and the country its natural resource that they vowed Sunday to strike if the law passes. They feel it gives too much to the international oil companies, which are putting pressure on the government as well. Thousands of top officials of the global oil industry attended two Iraq energy conferences in Dubai over the past eight days, urging attending Iraqi government officials to move faster.
“Iraqis have yet to agree on the shape of the country they live in. They need to agree on how to share resources and how to share power,” Yahia Said, director of Middle East and North Africa at the Revenue Watch Institute, said during the final panel discussion at Sunday’s summit. “It’s a matter that needs to be discussed and debated. … Iraqis need time and space to do that.”
--
(e-mail: energy@upi.com)
UPI Energy Editor
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates, Sept. 10 (UPI) -- Both Iraq’s federal government and the Kurdistan Regional Government are upset by each other’s efforts in reaching a deal on a national oil and gas law and have announced moves to develop the oil sector without it.
Neither has given up, however, on the hydrocarbons law, a tool that will both govern development of resources that bring in nearly all the government’s revenue and allow various factions to air their wants and find a compromise.
“If for any political reason the law is delayed, we’ll go ahead and start discussions with international oil companies,” Iraqi Oil Minister Hussain al-Shahristani said Saturday at an Iraq oil conference in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.
On Sunday, on the sidelines of the Iraq Petroleum 2007 summit, organized by The CWC Group, he said tenders for projects in Iraq’s vast oil and gas sector “will be announced in due time.” He didn’t say exactly which fields or exploration blocks, but they are included in the first phase of a five-year plan he outlined over the weekend, he said.
“The Ministry of Oil is entitled to sign any contract that is for the best benefit to the country,” he said. The government has been holding out for the federal law, but it appears pressure is wearing the patience thin.
The same goes for the KRG, which on Saturday announced it signed a production-sharing contract with an Iraqi-based subsidiary of Hunt Oil Co. of Dallas and Impulse Energy Corp.
“Any contract that has been signed by anybody other than the Ministry of Oil now before the new law is legislated has no standing as far as the government of Iraq is concerned,” Shahristani said Sunday of the deal. The KRG has signed a handful of oil and gas exploration and development deals with private firms, all of which have been condemned by Baghdad.
Shahristani said only the first four deals, struck prior to reaching agreement on a federal oil law, would carry any water with him. They would be reviewed by a federal oil and gas council established by the law to ensure they comply with it.
“We are not really looking for any blessing from others because we don’t need any of it,” KRG Natural Resources Minister Ashti Hawrami said in a telephone interview from Iraq. “Instead of undermining KRG’s achievements we would like to encourage others to work with us on the federal law to make some real progress in all the country.”
Without a new federal oil law, which has been in negotiations for more than a year, Iraq relies on legislation instated in the 1980s, which Shahristani says gives him the right to sign new deals. Hawrami said the 2005 constitution gives the Kurdistan region the right to pass its own oil law, which it did last month, and sign deals as well.
“Our recently enacted regional oil and gas law has nullified any other law before it. That is our constitutional right and we have done that,” he said, adding more deals are in the pipeline. “But, that only applies to the Kurdistan region, and the rest of Iraq is still governed by the old laws.”
The debate is more complex than merely negotiating laws and interpreting a constitution. There are layers of mistrust and fear fomented by decades of violent, strongman power wielded mostly along sectarian lines by Saddam Hussein. Such tension has been exacerbated by the past four plus years of an occupation that sought to use sectarian categories or roles to bring a slice of power to Iraq’s Shiite and Sunni Arabs and Kurds. But succeeding in being inclusive, the new form of government is also fractured along such identities.
The oil law, in turn, is not simply legislation governing the third-largest proven reserves of oil in the world. Oil sales funded more than 90 percent of government last year, so the oil is a base for power in Iraq. Agreeing on how to share and/or divvy that power (the extent of federalism in the new Iraq) and best develop the crude source of the power (the extent international investors can enter the longtime nationalized oil sector) is a litmus test.
The Bush administration and Congress included passage of an oil law as a benchmark for Iraq’s government (although the benchmark language referred to an oil law that decides how the oil revenue is to be shared, which will be decided in a separate revenue-sharing law). They said passing the law would lead to reconciliation.
As negotiations over the law turn tense, widening the gap between political players and creating the real or perceived need for unilateralism, it appears the law itself could be the proving ground for intra-Iraqi cooperation. It’s a decisive and divisive issue for Iraq, suffering from daily violence and a dwindling quality of life; it may not fit in an occupying power's cynical timeframe.
Indeed, backroom talks have seen successes. But soon after surfacing, deals break down or are found to be incomplete. In February an agreement was announced, but now neither the Kurds nor the central government can agree on changes each side wants or has made. Both still say they want to find a solution. That’s a feat considering the pressure being applied not only by the United States, other governments and institutions like the International Monetary Fund, but internally as well.
The Iraqi government is becoming weaker every day citizens experience long hours without electricity, long lines for fuel and hopes of restored healthcare, water, sewage and education systems. That, along with the violence, is spurring fighting between parties, even those allied by ethnicity or religion.
The oil unions in the south are so worried they’ll lose jobs and the country its natural resource that they vowed Sunday to strike if the law passes. They feel it gives too much to the international oil companies, which are putting pressure on the government as well. Thousands of top officials of the global oil industry attended two Iraq energy conferences in Dubai over the past eight days, urging attending Iraqi government officials to move faster.
“Iraqis have yet to agree on the shape of the country they live in. They need to agree on how to share resources and how to share power,” Yahia Said, director of Middle East and North Africa at the Revenue Watch Institute, said during the final panel discussion at Sunday’s summit. “It’s a matter that needs to be discussed and debated. … Iraqis need time and space to do that.”
--
(e-mail: energy@upi.com)
© 2007 United Press International. All Rights Reserved.
This material may not be reproduced, redistributed, or manipulated in any form.
This material may not be reproduced, redistributed, or manipulated in any form.
