Oil Assessment Work Gets Going in North Iraq

2 May 2003 A team from US Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg, Brown and Root (KBR) on Thursday started assessment work at Iraq’s northern oil fields, as part of a contract the company holds with the US military, a KBR official told International Oil Daily on the scene. “We are looking at various units and assessing oil and gas production facilities in coordination with [Iraq’s] North Oil Co. (NOC) management,” Rick Hopper,…

Oil Board Firms Up in Iraq; Somo Shattered

1 May 2003 US plans to set up an advisory board to oversee Iraq’s oil sector are taking shape. Fadhil Othman, a retired Iraqi oil marketing official now living in Turkey, is understood to have accepted Washington’s request that he serve as deputy head of the oil advisory board, a non-executive body. In view of Othman’s past experience as head of Iraq’s State Oil Marketing Organization (Somo), he “could be…

US Wants Iraqi Ministries Running Soon; Political Plan Unclear

25  April 2003 The chief civil administrator of Iraq, retired US general Jay Garner, announced Thursday that the process of governing Iraq would start next week with the reopening of ministries “which will have Iraqi faces on them” to offer services to the public. Garner also stressed that Iraqi exiles enlisted by Washington to help run important sectors, such as oil, would only be deployed on a temporary basis. But…

In Kirkuk, Oil Firm Struggles Back to Feet

24 April 2003 Until two weeks ago, Iraq’s North Oil Co. (NOC) was responsible for production capacity of more than 1 million barrels per day, centering on the giant Kirkuk oil field. Output came to an abrupt halt two weeks ago, when northern Iraq fell to US-led forces. And now, NOC appears to have been battered almost out of existence: Its headquarters are destroyed, its data is lost, and equipment…