Posted on 07/30/2014 8:17:26 AM PDT by afraidfortherepublic
A federal magistrate judge ruled Tuesday that U.S. Marshals will not be able to able to carry out her earlier order to seize a million barrels of Kurdish crude oil unless the tanker carrying the cargo comes closer to the Texas shore.
The Wall Street Journal reported that federal magistrate judge Nancy Johnson said that the United Kalavrvta tanker was not within the boundaries of the state or the court's authority. She also said that the matter of who owned the oil should be decided in Iraq, not the United States.
"Seems to me this is not a matter for the U.S. courts to tell the government—the governments—of Iraq who owns what," Johnson said, according to The Journal. "This just seems way outside our jurisdiction."
On Monday, Johnson had ordered the cargo seized in response to a complaint filed by the Iraqi government claiming the oil was smuggled out of Kurdistan without its permission.
If the tanker moves in closer so that smaller vessels can deliver its oil to shore, the U.S. Marshal will act on the court warrant and seize the cargo from those vessels, spokesman Dave Oney told the Associated Press.
The United Kalavryta left a Turkish port in June carrying the crude from a newly opened pipeline that transports crude from the Kurdish oil fields. The buyer was not immediately known.
As the ship approached Texas, Baghdad acted on a threat to sue anyone who buys Kurdish oil, pre-emptively filing a civil suit in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas. On Tuesday, Iraqi Oil Ministry spokesman Assem Jihad welcomed the U.S. judge's seizure order. "The Iraqi government considers these oil shipments to be illegal and we hope that everybody in the world will respect our measures," he said.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
“This just seems way outside our jurisdiction.”... indeed.
what have the kurds done to us lately??
Our Liberal President is attempting to stealing the natural resources of another country?
Hmmm
This is a joke. The Baghdad Government has no control over those Kurdish Oil Fields and it doesn’t look like they will anytime soon. They will be lucky to be able to control the ones in the area they haven’t loss to ISIS yet.
Let us hope the Kurds use the money to buy Jihadi-seeking missiles.
“Here’s an idea. Why don’t we support the Kurds instead of harass them? The Kurds are one of the few decent groups in the region. “
We should, but Obama isn’t into decent people!
And the jag-offs who voted for him still can't figure that out.
Looks to me the Magistrate strayed a little bit to far into foreign policy.
Which I guess is okay since Federal Magistrates are just about the lowest form of Federal Judges — Kinda like a municipal court judge but they work for the domain of federal district court judges.
I think, most of the bogus Warrants and No Knock warrants we hear about typically come from low level Magistrates.
I call it a down payment.
The Kurds number more than 40 million people and in a communication to me early last year I was told they still love Americans.
I cant understand who would want to seize their oil....other than a mob of jihadist crazies
Both Kuwaitis and Kurds still love America. From those I have heard from they know Obama stinks but will be gone soon enough. They do worry that America will elect another Obama-like candidate.
“The Kurds number more than 40 million people and in a communication to me early last year I was told they still love Americans.”
I feel like our “government” and I use the term loosely, has really hung the Kurds out to dry. We should, at the very least, provide the Kurds with enough modern weapons to keep ISIS out of their country. As far as the rest of Iraq is concerned, move out all of the remaining non-muzzies, throw in a herd of pigs, and let them continue to kill each other.
“They do worry that America will elect another Obama-like candidate.”
We all need to be worried about that!
Just viewed some then and now pix of the Normandy Beaches. I doubt if we have the kind of “citizens” today who could and would make that kind of a sacrifice for liberty, or the military leaders to provide the requisite direction.
The goal was/is to maintain the Iraq nation and not allow partitioning into southern shia, western sunni, and northern kurd because that partitions the oil.
If the oil gets partitioned, there will be continuous war over the oil.
So the US insisted and it was written into the Iraq constitution that the oil proceeds would be shared and there is a formula for that.
The Kurdish oil had to be shipped south thru the hands of the central govt who would collect the proceeds an disburse it in accordance with the constitution.
But eventually, the pipeline from Kurdish Iraq thru Turkey to the Med was built and now the kurds can get the oil onto the world market, bypassing the central govt, and keeping all the proceeds.
The Sunni Iraqis have had a lot of complaints about Maliki's shia central govt. But now that the Kurdish oil is bypassing, they are more than willing to align themselves ISIS.
That tanker is BIG baby. Kuwait should have been forced to pay us for our cost of kicking Saddam out of their oil fields!!!
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