Focusing On The Non-Oil Sector

Focusing On The Non-Oil Sector - Part 65 - Iraq's Turn To Syria Or The GCC. Baghdad is considering an offer from Damascus for Syria to becomethe main hub for Iranian and Iraqi crude oil and natural gas exports.However, Sunni Arab and Kurdish politicians are opposed to the ideamainly because this is seen as part of a plan by the Shi'itetheocracy theocracyGovernment by divine guidance or by officials who are regarded as divinely guided. In many theocracies, government leaders are members of the clergy, and the state's legal system is based on religious law. Theocratic rule was typical of early civilizations. of Tehran to control Iran and Syria. These politicians regardthe Syrian offer as being part of the theocracy's plan to reach theMediterranean for geo-strategic reasons. The Sunni and Kurdish politicians insist Iraq is far better servedby relying on petroleum exports via Turkey in the north and the Gulf aswell as Saudi Arabia in the south. Sunni Arabs say Iraq must have closerlinks with the six Arab Gulf Co-operation Council (GCC GCC:see Gulf Cooperation Council. (compiler, programming) GCC - The GNU Compiler Collection, which currently contains front ends for C, C++, Objective-C, Fortran, Java, and Ada, as well as libraries for these languages (libstdc++, libgcj, etc). ) states which areled by Saudi Arabia. They say that, in co-operation with GCC memberKuwait, Iraq can export huge volumes of crude oil and natural gas turnedinto LNG LNG(liquefied natural gas): see under natural gas. from Gulf terminals. Yet Shi'ite PM Nuri al-Maleki who isunder Iran's influence, is leaning to the Syrian option (see below)despite indications that Syria's Alawite/Ba'thist regime lostcontrol over the Iraqi card (see news5SyrIrnLebAug1-11. But Iran islosing oil market share because of biting US sanctions (seeomt5NigrProspAug1-11). Iraq's petroleum-rich Kurdish north is getting more autonomousand, while the area's Kurdistan Regional Government The introduction to this article may be too long. Please help improve the introduction by moving some material from it into the body of the article according to the suggestions at (KRG KRG Kurdistan Regional GovernmentKRG Key Resource Group (Los Angeles, California)KRG Killology Research GroupKRG Knoxville Repeater Group ) functionsas if it is part of this country, its people and local administratorsbehave as a potentially independent entity. Privately the latter calltheir region "Eastern Kurdistan" which they say willultimately include Iran's Kurds. They call Syria's Kurdisharea "Western Kurdistan" and suggest this could extend as faras the city of Aleppo. They call Turkey's Kurd minority"Northern Kurdistan" (see Part 64, ood1-IrqNorthJuly4-11). Iran's Shi'ite theocracy is beginning to appear to belosing control over Iraq and other parts of the Greater Middle East(GME GMEgranulomatous meningoencephalitis.GMEGraduate medical education, see there ) where it has headed an axis of anti-US/anti-Israel forces (seePart 63, ood6IrqIrnProblmsJun6-11). Theologians still following the lineof the late Imam Ruhullah Khomeini, including his Qom-based grand-sonsHassan and Hussein, accuse Tehran leaders of abusing his WuF concept andthus de-Komeinising the whole of Iran. They describe Supreme LeaderAyatullah Ali Khamenei's theocracy as having turned Iran into"a republic of fear", as the Khomeinist opposition has beensilenced. They say this republic will not last long (seenews23IrnWuF-FateJun6-11). The security of Iraqi petroleum supplies to world markets in thefuture depends on a lasting solution to a variety of problems, includingKuwait's programme to develop a strategic island which could blockthis country's planned expansion of its access to the Gulf forshipping, and the inability of local forces to defend oil and gasinfrastructures (see Part 62, ood5IrqOilSafty-May30-11). Iraqi strategists stress that, eventually, a more stable governmentin Baghdad will be needed to balance its ties to Tehran and relationswith the six GCC states as well as the rest of the Arab world.Otherwise, Iraq may risk being split into at least three differentstates, one Kurdish in the north, a Sunni Arab entity in the centre andwest and a Shi'ite theocracy in the south. That such a balance iscrucial to Iraq's survival as one country has several rewards, someof which will be of prime geo-strategic importance in view of thecurrent wave of regime changes in the Arab world and its GME periphery(see Part 61 in ood4IrqIrnGCC-Apr25-11). US geologists are advising Baghdad that, apart from provenconventional oil and gas reserves, Iraq may be sitting on hundreds oftrillions of cubic feet (TCF See Trenton Computer Festival. ) of untapped gas deposits which are notconventional and in-accessible through normal techniques. In SaudiArabia, there are said to be 470 TCF of unconventional gas yet to befound. The state-owned Saudi Aramco has begun work on tapping suchresources, using new E&P techniques developed in North America.There are shale oil deposits being developed in Jordan not far fromIraq's western frontiers (see Part 60 in ood3IrqGasMar28-11).