Bill
04-24-2007, 04:35 PM
Oh, what a prize that will be, when we've stolen their oil!
A new Time Magazine article starts talking about something that I knew about - the untouched giant fields of sweet light crude in Anbar Province.
The Sunni oil. What the oil companies have been calling "The Prize"!
If I knew about it (it was certainly talked about in the oil industry websites, which I read), I don't know why the hell the rest of america didn't know about it - but Time says that this is "new" news.
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1614000,00.html
"Last week a Colorado energy consultancy firm, IHS, stunned some of Iraq's politicians and oil engineers by declaring that the country's oil reserves were about 215 billion barrels — about double the estimates that have held for Iraq for years. That would make Iraq a giant oil power, second only to Saudi Arabia. If the estimates prove true, Iraq's potential would outstrip its other neighbor Iran, which sits atop about 136 billion barrels of oil. The IHS engineers examined 438 undrilled fields and used new technology to recalculate old reservoirs.
But for Iraqi politicians the more dramatic news might be where the country's unexpected reserves lie, rather than their size. The report says about 100 billion barrels of oil and a large amount of gas lie in the Sunni-dominated Al-Anbar province. Until now, Sunni politicians have feared economic devastation if Iraq divided into a federation or imploded into disparate ethnic states, since the territory dominated by their ethnic group was thought to be the only one without large reserves of oil. (Both the Shi'ite south and Kurdish north have productive fields.) "The Western desert has lain dormant," says Colin Lothian, senior analyst on Middle East energy for Wood Mackenzie, an international energy research and consultancy. "It's not out of the realm of possibility."
The fact that Sunni areas hold massive reserves could roil the precarious negotiations over Iraq's proposed new oil law, which would effectively end Iraq's nationalized oil industry"
A new Time Magazine article starts talking about something that I knew about - the untouched giant fields of sweet light crude in Anbar Province.
The Sunni oil. What the oil companies have been calling "The Prize"!
If I knew about it (it was certainly talked about in the oil industry websites, which I read), I don't know why the hell the rest of america didn't know about it - but Time says that this is "new" news.
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1614000,00.html
"Last week a Colorado energy consultancy firm, IHS, stunned some of Iraq's politicians and oil engineers by declaring that the country's oil reserves were about 215 billion barrels — about double the estimates that have held for Iraq for years. That would make Iraq a giant oil power, second only to Saudi Arabia. If the estimates prove true, Iraq's potential would outstrip its other neighbor Iran, which sits atop about 136 billion barrels of oil. The IHS engineers examined 438 undrilled fields and used new technology to recalculate old reservoirs.
But for Iraqi politicians the more dramatic news might be where the country's unexpected reserves lie, rather than their size. The report says about 100 billion barrels of oil and a large amount of gas lie in the Sunni-dominated Al-Anbar province. Until now, Sunni politicians have feared economic devastation if Iraq divided into a federation or imploded into disparate ethnic states, since the territory dominated by their ethnic group was thought to be the only one without large reserves of oil. (Both the Shi'ite south and Kurdish north have productive fields.) "The Western desert has lain dormant," says Colin Lothian, senior analyst on Middle East energy for Wood Mackenzie, an international energy research and consultancy. "It's not out of the realm of possibility."
The fact that Sunni areas hold massive reserves could roil the precarious negotiations over Iraq's proposed new oil law, which would effectively end Iraq's nationalized oil industry"