Posted on 07/22/2009 11:09:00 PM PDT by sonofstrangelove
With a projected capacity of about 40,000 bbl. a day, the new oil refinery inaugurated on July 18 by the Kurdish regional government of northern Iraq is modest even by the standards of Iraq's dilapidated oil industry. But its significance shouldn't be underestimated: in Kurdish minds, the region's ability to refine the oil it pumps is a vital step toward deepening its autonomy from the Arab-majority remainder of Iraq. (Read "The Reasons Behind Big Oil Declining Iraq's Riches.")
Until recently, Iraqi Kurdistan had no refineries of its own, and though the area is sitting on a huge pool of oil, it had to rely on gasoline supplies from elsewhere in Iraq, Turkey or Iran. Fearful of giving Iraq's ethnic Kurdish minority any control over the country's most precious resource, Saddam Hussein had not only declined to build refineries in the region; he made sure Iraq's oil pipelines bypassed Kurdish areas, and his army forcibly removed much of the Kurdish population from Kirkuk — the most important oil-producing area in the north — and repopulated the city with Arabs from the south. (Watch a video about the gas shortage in Iraq.)
Since Saddam's demise, however, the autonomous Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) is steadily developing an independent oil industry in northern Iraq. It has discovered and begun to develop new oil fields inside its boundaries, and has entered production-sharing deals with foreign oil companies that were made without the consent of the federal government in Baghdad. Those deals have raised suspicions among Iraq's Arab-dominated government that KRG is not simply taking on more of the prerogatives of sovereign statehood but is actually laying the economic infrastructure for independence.
(Excerpt) Read more at time.com ...
My bets are on the Kurds.The Peshmerga fought alongside the US Army and the coalition in the northern front during Operation Iraqi Freedom.
Kurds vs. Arabs has been one of the core problems of “Iraq”, an artificial state created by the British after the collapse of the Ottoman empire.
The US has been supporting the Kurds vs. the Arab Iraqis already in the 1960’s and 70’s.
I hope they can work a deal out peacefully, but if the shit really hit’s the fan my bet is also on the Kurds.
The biggest problem would be a Turkish intervention.
I do not think that the Turks would enter the hypothetical war because they have their own Kurd problem. If they decide to intervine, it will be a mess inside Turkey. I think the Kurd Peshmerga can handle the Turks too.
BTTT
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