[John] Jenkins: Threat is declining but still present: oil companies Shell & BP are currently resident in our Basra consulate general for security

And are Shell and BP paying rent to the state?

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[Martin] Gilbert: Why was/is Iraq so important to the UK? [Christopher] Prentice: It’s going to be 2nd largest energy producer, possibly even the 1st, in the world

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The leaders of China and three Central Asian nations gathered Sunday in Turkmenistan ahead of a ceremony inaugurating natural gas deliveries from the energy-rich region to China.
….

The pipeline culminates Chinese efforts to secure energy supplies for its fast-growing economy. The route also will enable gas producers in the region to diversify their exports away from Russia, which has exercised a virtual stranglehold over Central Asian energy supplies since the collapse of the Soviet Union.

“This is a significant project of cooperation between two nations that will benefit all countries in the region,” Chinese leader Hu Jintao told reporters in the Turkmen capital, Ashgabat.

“All countries in the region” except Afghanistan.

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China, the world’s second-largest oil consumer, may be seeking to invest in oil in the Western African states of Ghana and Guinea to help fuel its economy and bolster energy security.

China National Offshore Oil Corp. is in talks with Ghana National Petroleum Corp. to make a bid for a stake in the Jubilee oilfield discovery that would rival Exxon Mobil Corp.’s $4 billion offer, the Wall Street Journal said, citing unnamed people familiar with the situation. A Chinese fund is in dicussions with Guinea on possible financing for infrastructure, minerals and oil projects, the Financial Times reported.

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Iraq has barred [China Petroleum & Chemical Corporation, aka Sinopec] from taking part in a second round of bidding for major oil deals over its purchase of a Swiss oil firm active in Iraq’s Kurdistan region, a top official said on Thursday.

Iraq’s Oil Ministry, which deems deals the largely autonomous Kurdish region signs with foreign oil firms illegal, had already threatened to blacklist Sinopec, China’s biggest oil refiner, for acquiring Addax Petroleum Corp.

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(Also, if the report is out, and the US knows about these plans too, the meetings between these nations are no longer ’secret’. So let’s stop calling them ’secret’.)

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Turkey has the same energy concerns as the EU: Russia’s virtual monopoly over gas into Europe. Of course, Turkey realises it is a geopolitical-energy hub, and alongside deals with Qatar, the EU, talk of one with Iraq, it has signed one with Russia too.

I’d expect any EU-Turkey-Iran deal on Nabucco, an anti-Russian pipeline project and an effort the US supports at the present time, to upset the anti-Iran hawks. India’s stalling on a pipeline from Iran through Pakistan suggests some pressure from the US. But India (and China, which is busy signing deals in Central Asia) would still have energy needs. Expect the conspiracy theorists to be given more grist for their mills, as the Trans-Afghanistan pipeline is resurrected (at least in the media — the engineering of such a pipeline is another story altogether).

Steve LeVine, however, says this sorts of pipeline politics is no longer valuable to the US; events, such as the Russia-Georgia War, China’s aggressive emergence in Central Asia and developments in technology, having overtaken their policy.

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So does finding oil off the coast of Sierra Leone mean there are oil reserves all the way along the coast to Ghana?

[...]

Sierra Leone is one of the poorest states in the world and its neighbours to the south are not much better off. Oil production from Ghana’s Jubilee field is yet to ramp up, but the country is quite reasonably concerned that its oil wealth will turn it into yet another country ‘cursed’ by resources – it is not far away from Nigeria, after all, whose sizeable oil reserves have not exactly brought stability or prosperity for most of its people.

Speaking of West African nations ‘cursed’ with oil and mineral wealth:

Nigeria’s armed group fighting for a greater share of oil wealth has decided to extend a two-month-old ceasefire in the Niger Delta by 30 days but warned a government amnesty programme had not yet addressed key issues.

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