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Mon, 29 Jun 2009 17:05:09 GMT American forces have attempted to take over an Iranian oil field near the country's western border with Iraq, a security official says. “US forces backed by tanks entered the Mousian area of the Dehloran County, laying around 100 meters of pipeline in Iranian territory," the source, talking on condition of anonymity, said Monday. The source added that the pipes, marked with Iraqi flags, were blocked after Iranian forces pushed the “intruders” back across the border. Iraqi officials have been notified of Iran's objection to American movements along the common border, according to the source.

In a world running low on oil, several countries are still sitting on massive supplies. If only they could get to them. The Ferdows, Mound, and Zageh Fields Location: The Persian Gulf, off the coast of southern Iran Estimated Reserves: 38 billion barrels Details: Discovered in 2003, these three interconnected fields are among the largest oil deposits ever found. Ferdows is the largest, with 30.6 billion barrels. This figure may seem astounding, but it’s usually not possible to extract all the oil from a field due to technological and financial constraints. Plus, assessing how much oil these deposits can actually...

Iranian Oil Minister Gholam-Hossein Nozari on Sunday announced the discovery of a new oilfield with in-place reserves of some 525 million barrels.

A bill introduced in Congress this week would "compel" oil and natural gas companies to produce from federal lands they are leasing. If only it were that easy to find and produce oil. Imagine, an act of Congress that could do what geology could not. These lawmakers ask why oil and gas companies want more access to federal lands to drill if they aren't using all of the 68 million acres they already have? Anyone with even the most basic understanding of how oil and natural gas are produced – and this should include many members of Congress – knows...

Junk your SUV and buy an electric scooter. Recent claims by various OPEC leaders that the world has plenty of oil left are bunk, alleges Sadad Al-Husseini, a former top executive at Saudi Aramco, Saudi Arabia’s state-owned oil company. Oil-producing countries are inflating the size of their oil reserves by as much as 300 billion barrels by padding supposedly proven reserves with “probable” reserves and tar and oil sands, according to Husseini. Such hypothetical reserves are “not delineated, not accessible and not available for production,” Husseini said at a recent energy conference in London. Oil production has now reached its...

BAGHDAD, March 26 (Reuters) - Oil production and exports from Iraq's southern oilfields could be disrupted in three days if workers cannot reach their offices due to fighting in Basra, a Southern Oil Company official said on Wednesday. "If the military operations continue for three more days, the oil workers will not be able to continue their work and this is going to definitely affect oil production and exports," said the official, speaking on the condition of anonymity.

ISTANBUL, Turkey - Reports that Turkey has massed a huge military force on its border with Iraq bolstered fears that an invasion targeting hideouts of Kurdish rebels could be imminent. But how deeply into Iraq is the Turkish army willing to go, how long would it stay and what kind of fallout could come from allies in Washington and other NATO partners? All these questions weigh on Turkey's leaders, who have enough on their hands without embarking on a foreign military adventure. Turkey is caught up in an internal rift between the Islamic-rooted government and the military-backed, secular establishment, less...

Already under siege by American environmental regulators and financial-market investigators, BP PLC faces a new inquisitor today: Congress. In the first of as many as two Capitol Hill appearances in coming days, U.S. operations chief Bob Malone and other BP officials face a public grilling from politicians just ahead of U.S. midterm elections. The House Energy and Commerce Committee will hear testimony from experts and BP officials on corrosion problems at BP's Alaska oil field. The London company partially shuttered the field last month after discovering corroded pipes. The hearing comes amid a series of embarrassing regulatory, criminal and civil...

Asia has a paltry 5% of the world's oil reserves. Compare that to the former Soviet Union which has more than one fifth (20.8%) and Africa and the Middle East, which have nearly 2/3s of the oil reserves (60.5%). What to do...China National Petroleum Co. and India's Oil & Natural Gas Corp. teamed up to buy a Syrian oil field! I thought about doing that once -- buying a gas station. But then, I realized I still had to buy the gas before I could pump it out. The reason India and China went in to buy the field together...

LONDON — Japan has agreed to develop an Iranian oil field. Japan's Inpex intends to begin work on the Azadegan oil field in 2006, industry sources said. The contract was signed in 2004, but delayed amid U.S. opposition to foreign energy projects in Iran. The Japanese daily Asahi Shimbun daily said Tokyo has approved the Impex project, Middle East Newsline reported. The newspaper said the government has assessed that Iran had been prepared to replace the Japanese company with other foreign firms. The sources said Inpex plans to spend 40 months to develop Azadegan. They said oil production at the...

The genteel two-storey summer retreat at the back of the Institute of Political and International Studies in one of North Tehran's most exclusive neighborhoods may seem like the perfect place of retirement for the Islamic Republic of Iran's more intellectual diplomats. But the senior Iranian diplomat and several-times former ambassador that I'm meeting there today still keeps his ears firmly to the ground. He worries over the discreet Israeli presence in North Iraq and Tel Aviv's alleged support for an independent Kurdistan that would grievously destabilize the region and separate Iraq into three ethnic entities. At the same time, he...

Baghdad, 8 July (AKI) - Eleven oil fields in southern Iraq, capable of boosting the country's production to three million barrels a day will soon be tendered to international investors, the Iraqi oil ministry announced Friday. "The ministry needs legislation which will allow it to fix international work criteria with companies that are involved in petroleum investments," said the ministry's spokesman, Asim Jihad. "Iraq needs capital investments to develop its petroleum industry, he said, adding that the government had estimated that some 25 billion dollars in investments were required to boost oil production to 5-6 million barrels a day. Jihad...

A book being published next week says Saudi Arabia has wired its oil fields with radioactive explosives to discourage invaders from trying to take control of the kingdom's reserves, but Saudi Arabia denied it had any explosives at all attached to its oil facilities. Saudi Arabia has decided that "leveling the major oil production facilities and blasting away the core of the industry's infrastructure was not enough to deter an enemy from seizing its prized commodity," it says. "We have not seen Mr Posner's latest book. However the allegation that the kingdom of Saudi Arabia has explosives or any other...

If anybody wondered why the sainted United Nations, France, Russia and Syria joined forces in trying to block the U.S. from ousting the brutal Saddam Hussein regime in Iraq the answer is now becoming clear; they feared exposure of the corruption into which they had dragged the now-infamous Oil for Food program. That program was meant to allow Saddam to sell a certain amount of oil outside of the bounds of the UN sanctions. The proceeds, handled by the UN, were to be used to buy food and medicine and other basic necessities for the Iraqi people, thus keeping the...

The oil services conglomerate Halliburton Co. will wind down its operations in Iran and seek to separate its engineering and construction subsidiary KBR from the parent, chairman and CEO Dave Lesar said today. Lesar made the disclosures today to analysts in a conference call after the company disclosed its fourth-quarter loss narrowed to $201 million from a loss of $947 million in the same period a year ago. Halliburton does business in Iran through a foreign-owned subsidiary, which is allowed as long as Americans don't participate in or direct that business. But a federal grand jury is investigating whether the...

HOUSTON – U.S. oilfield services company Halliburton Co. will pull out of Iran after its current contracts there are wound down, its chief executive said Friday, citing a poor business climate in the Islamic Republic. "The business environment currently in Iran is not conducive to our overall strategy and objectives. As a result, we have decided to exit Iran and wind down our operations there while fulfilling our existing contracts and commitments," CEO Dave Lesar said on a conference call with investors. The Houston-based company, formerly headed by Vice President Dick Cheney, has also been criticized for its work for...

CALGARY, Alberta (Reuters) - Iraq's oil ministry has called for new bids to develop an oil field in the war-torn country, blindsiding the Canadian company that appeared to have won the contract, a top executive with the firm said on Friday. OGI Group, a privately held exploration, development and oil field service company, had been successful in its tender to develop the Himrin field, and was awaiting final approval when it was told of the new bidding round on Thursday, the executive said. "We won it, but it seems the ministry themselves, they yielded to certain pressures, unknown pressures, so...

Sudan Oilfields and Genocide There is a killing place in Africa called the oilfields of the Sudan. Here the Sudanese government (GOS) practices systemic genocide with a vengeance on its own people. In this place a more able world has ignored the cries of cruelly persecuted natives who have lived here for many generations. In this place a terrible holocaust is taking place each day. Here a repressive government kills its own after the events of September 11th, with impunity, challenging the United Nations and the coalition's resolutions to enforce the protocol of 1948 outlawing genocide. The history of man...

The head of security for oil fields in northern Iraq's Kirkuk has been assassinated, Al Jazeera television reported on Wednesday. The television quoted Iraqi police as saying Ghazi Talabani was killed. It gave no further details. Iraqi leaders and U.S.-led occupation forces are fighting a wave of assassinations, kidnappings, bombings and sabotage by guerrillas seeking to destabilize the country ahead of a June 30 handover of power. On Tuesday, an explosion ripped through a crude oil pipeline linking northern Iraqi fields. Saboteurs blasted an oil pipeline feeding storage tanks at the southern city of Basra in the Gulf, cutting most...

GLOBAL JIHAD New al-Qaida plot to burn U.S. forests Arab message board posts 'plan of economic attack' Posted: April 8, 2004 1:00 a.m. Eastern © 2004 WorldNetDaily.com An Arabic-language jihadi website posted a message purporting to be "al-Qaida’s plan of economic attack" on the U.S. that included setting forest fires, according to the Northeast Intellgence Network. The six-point plan appeared Saturday and called for: attacks on the assets of large American companies all over the world; attacks on U.S. oil refineries; attacks on civilian airports with the goal of financially devastating U.S. airlines; deliberate pollution of food system; setting of...

<p>BABA GURGUR, Iraq — With security guards now deployed along Iraq's export pipeline to the Mediterranean, crude from one of the country's biggest oil fields could start flowing to overseas markets "in a matter of days," a senior Iraqi oil official said.</p>

The US military awarded two contracts Friday to restore Iraq's oil infrastructure to pre-war levels, the largest one worth up to 1.2 billion dollars going to Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg Brown and Root. The contracts were awarded by the US Army Corps of Engineers even as the Pentagon's inspector general was considering whether to launch an investigation into an earlier Iraq oil contract awarded to Kellogg, Brown and Root. The Halliburton subsidiary was contracted to restore oil fields and installations in southern Iraq to pre-war levels under the contract awarded Friday, which had a minimum value of 500,000 dollars and a...

Papers released under the 30-year rule show Britain worried about Middle East conflict and what to buy for a royal wedding The British Government believed America was preparing for a lightning war in the Middle East to end the 1973 oil crisis, including an invasion of Kuwait, documents released today to the National Archives show. The Joint Intelligence Committee, the body that acts as the link between the intelligence services and Downing Street, warned the Prime Minister, Edward Heath that Washington was planning to seize oil fields in Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi and Kuwait to secure the Western economies. The...

LONDON The U.S. government seriously contemplated using its military to seize oil fields in the Middle East during the Arab oil embargo of 30 years ago, according to a declassified British government document made public Thursday. The top-secret document reveals that the United States, under President Richard Nixon, was prepared to act more aggressively than previously had been thought to secure America's oil supply if tensions between Israel and its Arab neighbors continued to escalate after the October 1973 Middle East war or if the oil embargo did not abate. In fact, the embargo did peter out, by March 1974....

LONDON : British spy chiefs secretly warned that the United States would be prepared to invade Saudi Arabia and Kuwait to seize their oilfields following the 1973 Arab-Israeli war, it was disclosed. Files released to the British National Archives under the 30-year rule for classified documents show the intelligence agencies believed the US was ready to take military action to prevent further disruption to oil supplies. Advertisement It followed the decision in October 1973 by the Arab nations to slash oil production, and send prices rocketing, while imposing a complete embargo on the Americans over their support for Israel. In...

<p>LONDON, England (AP) -- British spy chiefs warned after the 1973 Arab-Israeli war that they believed the United States might invade Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Abu Dhabi to seize their oil fields, according to records released Thursday.</p> <p>A British intelligence committee report from December 1973 said America was so angry over Arab nations' earlier decision to cut oil production and impose an embargo on the United States that seizing oil-producing areas in the region was "the possibility uppermost in American thinking."</p>

1973 US threat to seize oilfields by Paul Reynolds BBC News Online world affairs correspondent The United States considered using force to seize oil fields in the Middle East during an oil embargo by Arab states in 1973, according to British government documents just made public. The papers, released under the 30-year-rule, show that the British government took the threat so seriously that it drew up a detailed assessment of what the Americans might do. It was thought that US airborne troops would seize the oil installations in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait and might even ask the British to do...

THE coalition forces signed a contract for the hiring of 6,500 additional security guards to protect oil-related facilities in Iraq, a spokesman said today. The Coalition Provisional Authority signed a contract with Erinys International security firm to hire and train the guards to protect 100 oil-related installations, the spokesman said, adding the contract had been under negotiation for a few months. The announcement was made after the pipeline from Iraq's northern oilfields around Kirkuk to the Turkish terminal of Ceyhan was attacked on Friday when unknown assailants blew up a section near Baiji. The attack has landed a hard blow...

The huge effort to restore Iraq's oil industry begins every day two hours south of the Iraq-Kuwait border, at the lavish Crowne Plaza Hotel in Kuwait City. No sooner does the lobby restaurant open at 5 a.m. than a line of middle-aged men in jumpsuits, golf shirts and identical tan caps forms at the breakfast buffet, eschewing the mezzeh and labneh for French toast, home fries and beef bacon. Outside, a couple of dozen silver S.U.V.'s are lined up, and after a quick breakfast the men are off in a swift northbound convoy, each car marked with the sideways V...

Iraq has two things that interest Turkey and two other things that interest Iran. One of the two is a source of temptation, the other of fear. What tempts Turkey in Iraq is a share in the oilfields of Mosul and Kirkuk. What Turkey fears is that Iraqi Kurds may get too big for their boots and give ideas to Turkish Kurds. What tempts Iran's mullahs is the prospect of extending the Khomeinist revolution into Iraq, thus ending their ideological isolation in the Muslim world. What Tehran fears, of course, is the revival of Najaf, in central Iraq, as the...

Allies putting people ahead of oil in Iraq http://www.jewishworldreview.com | (UPI) -- Coalition troops tightened their hold on the oilfields of northern Iraq Friday although providing humanitarian supplies to the population will be getting a higher priority than resuming the flow of crude. The northern oil city of Kirkuk fell to allied troops and Kurdish fighters this week, giving the invasion forces control of the major oil fields in both the north and south of the country as well as key infrastructure. "At this point, four of the very important gas-oil separation plants (in Kirkuk) and several wells have been...

Coalition Controls All Iraqi Oil Fields By NICOLE WINFIELD .c The Associated Press CAMP AS SAYLIYAH, Qatar (AP) - All oil fields in Iraq now fall within areas controlled by the U.S. coalition, a U.S. general announced Monday. Allied forces had previously secured all 1,000 oil wells in southern Iraq. Kurdish allies last week seized the northern oil city of Kirkuk, Iraq's No. 2 oil center, which pumps as much as 900,000 barrels a day. U.S. Brig. Gen. Vincent Brooks made the announcement at a U.S. Central Command briefing in Doha, Qatar. ``There is one well we discovered in the...

<p>Washington -- Iraq sits atop the world's second-largest oil reserves. Yet oil will not come close to covering the immediate expenses of rebuilding its broken economy.</p> <p>In fact, experts warn that the vast pool of liquid wealth under Iraqi soil is a mixed blessing that complicates the reconstruction of Iraq's political and economic life while posing separate dangers to the Bush administration's navigation of oil politics.</p>

Rumaila, Iraq -- Iraqi forces retain control over 40 percent of the country's southern Rumaila oil fields, which cover an area the size of New Jersey, as the allied invasion of Iraq enters its third week, the U.S. military's top engineer in the Gulf said. ``Out of the 1,000 oil wells in the south, we control everything which is basically below Basra, that's 600 wells,'' Colonel Michael Morrow said in an interview at the Central Command Center in Qatar. Excluding the nine wells that were set alight by the Iraqi forces in the early days of the war, ``the rest...

Developments in Iraq's Oil Fields .c The Associated Press THE OIL FIELDS: Firefighters in the Rumeila South oil field were pumping water into man-made lagoons on Thursday, preparing to again attack the two remaining fires at oil wells. Teams from Boots & Coots International Well Control and the Kuwait Oil Co. failed to put out the blazes earlier this week because they lacked sufficient water. Both teams then gave up using water tanks and instead dug lagoons to hold more water. They expected to be ready to battle the fires on Friday, said Aisa Bouyabes, the Kuwaiti team leader. Rumeila...

Kurdish Fighters Move Toward Key Oil City By BRIAN MURPHY .c The Associated Press TAQTAQ, Iraq (AP) - Kurdish fighters in northern Iraq have taken control of more territory from withdrawing Iraqi forces, moving closer to the major oil center of Kirkuk. The nearly 10-mile advance Sunday by the U.S.-backed Kurdish militia was unchallenged but slowed by dense minefields left by Saddam Hussein's troops, said Ares Abdullah, a Kurdish commander. It was the third significant shift since Thursday in the front line separating Iraqi forces from the U.S.-backed Kurds. Each Iraqi move has allowed the Kurds to move closer to...

NEAR PERDEH, Iraq (AP) - Without firing a shot, Kurdish militiamen moved closer Saturday to the key prize of the north - Kirkuk and its oil fields - after Iraqi forces staged a sudden withdrawal to possibly plug defenses targeted by U.S. airstrikes. The extent of the aerial barrage around the northern centers of Kirkuk and Mosul is not fully known. But Kurdish commanders interpreted the latest retrenching of Iraqi forces toward Kirkuk as evidence that the daily attacks had taken a serious toll and that Saddam Hussein needed to solidify the lines. "They are getting ready for a last...

It will take about three months for Iraq's big southern oil fields to start exporting again, a British commander predicted, suggesting that the global petroleum industry could be pinched by an outage of Iraqi supplies for longer than many analysts had anticipated. The handful of blazes that erupted amid war in Iraq's prize Rumeila fields are steadily being put out. But the commander of British forces in the Persian Gulf said Thursday it would take time and about $1 billion to repair the fields. "They are in terrible condition," said Air Marshal Brian Burridge. "It will take three months, and...

<p>NEAR IRBIL, Iraq — After falling out of the sky and sleeping in the mud, American paratroopers grabbed a strategic air base on Thursday and began plotting how to cross 80 miles and thousands of Iraqi troops to seize invaluable oil fields in northern Iraq.</p>

I watched with disgust as the daily Centcom briefing on the war for Iraq took place Wednesday morning. While there has been an obvious anti-American tenor from the press corps throughout Iraqi Freedom, the questions on Wednesday were so virulent that they are worth revisiting. First and foremost, the majority of reporters did not have questions at all. The majority of reporters wanted to do nothing more than make a statement on camera, and then ask Brigadier General Vincent Brooks to address it. One of these statements was the regurgitation of an Internet rumor that said Vice President Dick...

KUWAIT CITY (AP) -- Fighting around the southern Iraq oil fields that U.S.-led forces had previously thought were secure has driven out civilian firefighters trying to put out the oil well blazes, the top firefighter said Monday. ``It's not nearly as safe as they said it was,'' said Brian Krause, vice president and senior blowout specialist for Houston-based Boots and Coots. ``We're kind of sitting ducks out there.'' The Iraqi resistance in the oil fields challenges U.S. claims that southern Iraq is quickly falling under allied control. U.S. Marines declared the southern Rumailah oil fields in Iraq unsafe for journalists...

Developments in Iraq's Oil Fields, World Oil MarketsThe Associated PressPublished: Mar 24, 2003THE OIL FIELDS: Fighting around seven burning oil wells in the Rumeila South oil field in southern Iraq has driven out some civilian firefighters, an official said Monday. U.S.-led forces had previously thought the field's facilities were secure. "It's not nearly as safe as they said it was," said Brian Krause, vice president and senior blowout specialist for Houston-based Boots and Coots. "We're kind of sitting ducks out there." U.S. Marines declared the field unsafe for journalists to visit Monday, and canceled plans for a media tour....

As the United States strives to convince NATO member Turkey to endorse possible military action against Iraq, Ankara has rekindled a nearly 80-year-old territorial controversy stemming from the upheaval that followed the breakup of the Ottoman Empire after World War I. A Turkish government official recently said his country might consider pursuing a legal claim over two oil-rich northern Iraqi cities that once belonged to the Ottoman Empire. What could Ankara's possible motives be in reviving the issue as the United States prepares to possibly strike Baghdad? RFE/RL reports. Prague, 4 February 2003 (RFE/RL) -- In comments published in the...

Russia Accuses U.S. of Seizing Iraqi Oil By VLADIMIR ISACHENKOV .c The Associated Press MOSCOW (AP) - Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov criticized the U.S.-led war on Iraq, accusing Washington on Saturday of trying to seize control of Iraq's oil while shutting out companies from Russia and elsewhere. Baghdad owes Moscow at least $7 billion in Soviet-era debt and has awarded lucrative oil contracts to Russian oil companies. Ivanov said Washington's call to expel Iraqi diplomats seemed part of a strategy to invalidate those oil deals by further undermining the legitimacy of Saddam Hussein's regime. Russia has refused to comply with...

London, Mar 22, 2003 (EFE via COMTEX) -- Iraqi President Saddam Hussein ordered his forces to booby trap "practically all" of the country's oil and natural gas installations, British Chief of Defense Staff, Admiral Sir Michael Boyce, said Saturday. In a joint press conference with Defense Secretary Geoff Hoon, Boyce said Saddam's order indicated that the Iraqi leader was "prepared to blow up the (country's) entire economy." The admiral also confirmed that the Iraqi Army's 51st Infantry Division made up of some 8,000 troops had begun to surrender near the strategic southern Iraqi city of Basra and reported "many thousands...

Allied Troops Capture Key Oil Facilities By RAVI NESSMAN and BRUCE STANLEY .c The Associated Press SOUTHERN IRAQ (AP) - U.S. and British troops have captured many key facilities in Iraq's southern oil fields, saving them from possible sabotage and ensuring their use for the country's postwar reconstruction, senior military officers said Friday. American units advancing west of the southern city of Basra secured the Rumeila field, whose daily output of 1.3 billion barrels makes it Iraq's most productive. Coalition forces also discovered that only seven oil wells were on fire in southern Iraq - far fewer than many officials...

Myers says U.S. will soon secure Iraq oil fields WASHINGTON, March 21 (Reuters) - U.S. military commander Gen. Richard Myers said oil fields in southern Iraq should be secured later on Friday and that Iraqi soldiers were surrendering in the north and south of the country. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said U.S. troops who moved into southern Iraq on Thursday had moved through the southern Iraqi oil fields. "These fields, if successful, should be secured sometime later today. They will be a great resource for the Iraqi people," he said. Myers also said several hundred military...

UNITED STATES-BRITISH ADVANCING RAPIDLY ON ALL WARFRONTS FRIDAY, CLEARING THE WAY TO BAGHDAD AND NORTHERN OIL CITIES.NORTHERN AND SOUTHERN OIL FIELDS ARE REPORTED SECURE BY UNITED STATES FORCES.UNITED STATES SPECIAL FORCES ENTER KIRKUK OIL FIELDS FRIDAY TO FLUSH OUT IRAQI TROOPS.

US should take Rumailah oilfields mainly intact-UK KUWAIT CITY, March 21 (Reuters) - U.S. forces fighting in southeastern Iraq look likely to capture the vital Rumailah oilfields largely intact, a British military spokesman said on Friday. "The U.S. Marines are moving well into the Rumailah oilfields and it seems like we will be able to seize much of the oil structure intact," Colonel Chris Vernon told Reuters by telephone from the Kuwaiti desert. The Rumailah fields are crucial to Iraq's oil production. Earlier on Friday there were reports that several oil well heads in the region had been set ablaze...

WITH THE FIFTH MARINES, Iraq, March 20 (UPI) -- Dawn broke over the al-Ramallah oil fields of southern Iraq Friday to plumes of billowing smoke from torched wells and destroyed Iraqi military positions and the sight of Iraqi soldiers surrendering by the score.The Gas Oil Separation Plant 10 kilometers (6 miles) north of the Kuwaiti border was burning fiercely in two places, set alight in an apparent scorched earth move by the Saddam Hussein regime.Elsewhere on the horizon, at least four natural gas facilities were spewing flame and smoke in the distance.The facility, referred to on Marine Corps maps...