I hope you'll understand if I am not deeply concerned with the details of oil production unless they are significant enough to produce a shift in national strategy or politics. Discussions of Peak Oil invariably relate to longer-term strategies, but I am most interested in which countries will control the distribution of oil in the near future. In particular, I would be interested in how China guarantees a steady supply of oil for itself given its current naval power. I suppose it's possible with soft power alone, but I think that would require perfect tactics.
So for example, I found these comments from one of your posts very interesting:
On Oct. 18, 2011, Exxon signed six exploration contracts in Kurdistan. The move represented a seismic shift in Iraq's balance of power: Exxon was by far the largest company to align with the Kurds, and it openly betrayed Baghdad to do so. Iraq's top oil official, Deputy Prime Minister for Energy Hussain al-Shahristani, had warned Exxon that signing with the Kurds would be illegal, and constituted a breach of the West Qurna 1 contract. But Exxon's lawyers disagreed. Baghdad was on weak legal footing, since -- in the absence of a modern oil law to bolster its position -- the Oil Ministry's claims, of primary authority over contracting, rested on subjective interpretations of Iraqi law.
...
|
| Other oil giants are following Exxon's lead. France's Total and Russia's Gazprom both signed deals in Kurdistan over the summer, despite also holding contracts with Baghdad that are now in jeopardy. Chevron signedfor two Kurdish exploration blocks in July. Unlike the others, however, Chevron had never even bothered with the central government in the first place: The company's leaders thought Iraq was driving too hard a bargain.
|
|
...
Against this backdrop, the Turkish government has provisionally approved the construction of oil and gas pipelines to the Kurdish border. Such infrastructure would be transformational for Iraq and the region. It would bring Kurdistan to the brink of economic self-sufficiency; that, in turn, would threaten to sever the ties of financial reliance on Baghdad that have kept Kurdistan from declaring itself an independent state. |
