Tishwash:  Oil and gas law…the unsolvable knot

The oil and gas law is considered one of the sensitive laws in the Iraqi state, as it is one of the axes of the ongoing conflict between the central and regional governments over oil imports.

The center of the dispute over the law is that the region wants to control oil imports in its lands according to its mood without the control of the federal government, while the political forces do not want to grant this privilege to the region because it gives it a kind of separatist independence, so to speak.

Since the first session of the Iraqi Council of Representatives, in 2005, the draft oil and gas law has been stuck in drawers, as disagreements prevent its approval in its final form.

After 18 years, he announced the formation of a committee to draft the law and present it to the government and the House of Representatives.

The committee that was formed between Baghdad and Kurdistan to draft a draft law for oil and gas includes the Minister of Oil, the Minister of Natural Resources in the region, the Director General of SOMO, and the advanced staff in the Ministry of Oil, as well as the oil-producing governorates such as Basra, Dhi Qar, Maysan, and Kirkuk.

Iraq exports an average of 3.3 million barrels of crude oil per day, and black gold constitutes more than 90 percent of the Iraqi treasury’s resources.

Article 14 relates to oil revenues in the Kurdistan region and their audit by the Federal Oversight Office

The draft Iraqi oil and gas law regulates this vital sector for Iraq and the management of the country’s oil fields through one national company, with imports being deposited in one account.

The financial advisor to the Iraqi Prime Minister, Mazhar Muhammad Salih, confirmed in statements that accelerating the adoption of the federal oil and gas project law in the House of Representatives as quickly as possible will establish a stable national road map for investment and production of the country’s primary sovereign resource, which is oil and gas.

He explained that “this natural resource contributes directly to Iraq’s gross domestic product at a direct rate of approximately 50 percent, and leaves an indirect impact on the total economic activity of our country at a rate of no less than 85 percent.”

Saleh said, “Adopting a unified national oil policy, and achieving optimal investment and production in Iraq’s oil region, starting from the southern fields up to the northern and regional fields, is an important and strategic matter in the matter of taking advantage of opportunity costs in the optimal and harmonious operation of Iraqi oil policy currently.”

The draft oil and gas law in Iraq available to Parliament stipulates that responsibility for managing the country’s oil fields must be entrusted to a national oil company, and supervised by a federal council specialized in this subject.

For its part, the Kurdistan Oil Law indicates that the Iraqi government has the right to participate in the management of fields discovered before 2005, but the fields discovered afterward belong to the regional government.

In 2022, the Federal Court in Baghdad ordered the region to deliver the oil produced on its lands to Baghdad, and to cancel contracts that the region had signed with foreign companies. The matter went so far as to invalidate the Baghdad judiciary’s contracts with many foreign companies, especially American and Canadian companies.

After years of exporting oil alone via Turkey, the Kurdistan region must adhere, as of late 2023, to the decision of an international arbitration body that gave Baghdad the right to fully manage Kurdistan’s oil.

As a result, exports from the region stopped. A temporary agreement signed between Baghdad and Erbil stipulates that Kurdistan oil sales will be made through the Iraqi Oil Marketing Company “SOMO,” while revenues generated from the region’s fields will be deposited in a bank account with the Central Bank of Iraq or one of the banks approved by the Central Bank of Iraq.

 A member of the Parliamentary Oil and Gas Committee, MP Durgham al-Maliki, revealed that the coordination framework and the state administration coalition discussed the oil and gas law with Masoud Barzani.

Al-Maliki told Al-Maalouma Agency, “The committee discussed the draft law in a professional manner and completed most of its paragraphs, but the government requested its withdrawal to make amendments to it, indicating that the law is still in the government’s possession.”

He promised, “The approval of the annual budgets was disrupted due to oil disputes between the center and the region, indicating that approving the law has become an urgent necessity because of its ability to resolve 90% of the disputes between the region and the center.”

He stressed, “The enactment of the law is governed by political agreement, not professional agreement,” calling on “political forces to put pressure on the government to send the law for the purpose of legislating it.”  link

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CandyKisses:  Member:  Iraq ranks 61st in the world in the scale of the safest countries

Baghdad – Mawazine News

Iraq ranked 61st in the world out of 100 listed countries and the seventh safest Arab in the world for the current year 2024.

ACCORDING TO A RATING FROM CEOWORLD MAGAZINE.

Seed by Mawazine News, the safest countries by taking into account different dimensions, these dimensions include safety from violent crime, safety from terrorism, safety of transport, health measures (including diseases), and safety for specific groups such as women; foreign travelers, migrants, expatriates, foreign travelers and migrants.

In 2024, Andorra, located in the Pyrenees mountains between Spain and France, was chosen as the safest country in the world, and despite being one of the smallest and least populated countries in Europe, with a population of only about 82,000 people, it attracts more than 3.5 million visitors from abroad annually, making it the country with the largest number of tourists per capita with points with 97.68 points, followed by the UAE with 97.13 points, followed by the Green Land located in the Americas with 96.98 points, followed by Liechtenstein in Europe with 96.97 points.

Of the 188 countries around the world, Iraq ranked 61st globally, with points of about 82 points out of 100 points.

The index put 5 Arab countries in the safest countries category, Iraq came in seventh place after: the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait, Jordan, Qatar.

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Tishwash: Parliamentary Finance: Oil companies’ dues added to budget tables, government coordination to resume exports

The Parliamentary Finance Committee confirmed the continuation of coordination and communication between the federal government and the Kurdistan Region to resume oil exports through the Turkish port of Ceyhan.

The Vice-Chairman of the Committee, Ikhlas Al-Dulaimi, stated in a statement to the National Iraqi News Agency / NINA /, that “the general budget tables approved by the Council of Representatives are the ones adopted by the government, thus canceling any financial texts and paragraphs mentioned outside it,” and pointed out that there are allocations for the costs of oil production and transportation worth 3 trillion and 800 billion dinars, which were added to the general budget tables.

She added, “If an agreement is reached between the federal government and the region to resume oil exports, the federal Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Oil and Natural Resources in the region will proceed to coordinate to find a mechanism to disburse those amounts and pay the dues of oil companies.”

She explained, “The oil companies operating in the Kurdistan Region, the region requests 6 months’ amounts and there are contracts signed between the two parties that are difficult to cancel, because they are giant foreign companies that will resort to the judiciary and sue the region and the federal government.”   link

Mot:  .. I Mean Some Peoples

Mot: . They Say !!!!— Sure Hoping Soooooooooooooooon!!!!