Iraqi Kurdistan oil output jumps 50% in June

The Wall Street Journal  by SARAH KENT  Jul 11, 2014

The IEA says Iraqi Kurdistan is pumping around 120,000 barrels a day to the Turkish port of Ceyhan via a pipeline. Here, a worker performs checks at the Turkish oil port. Reuters

Oil production from the Kurdistan region of Iraq increased by more than 50% last month, despite violence in the country’s north and as logistical problems at the port of Basra cut exports from the south.

The shifting nature of Iraq’s oil sector reflects political developments in the country. In a bid to gain greater independence, the Kurdistan Regional Government has taken advantage of its relative stability to increase oil exports in the past two months, infuriating Baghdad which claims sovereignty over the country’s natural resources.

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Jeremiah the Hebrew prophet saw the nations of the "Medes" - today the people known as Kurds - rising up as a great nation capable of battling and defeating the armies of the Chaldeans, today's Iraqis.

When this blog was begun in 2006, it seemed impossible that the beaten down and victimized Kurds could ever be in a position to attack and defeat the new Iraqi army trained and supplied by the Americans. Yet here today in 2014, we see the Iraqi forces fleeing from ISIS rebels without even engaging them, and the Kurdish Peshmerga forces re-capturing oil fields and Kurdish-populated towns with little resistance.

And now the Kurds control their own oil production, export and revenues from the sale of Kurdish oil, with production skyrocketing.

The Kurds are developing into what Forbes calls a formidable "oil power." It no longer seems so improbable that they could not only defend themselves against Iraqi attack, but could one day overwhelm, defeat and plunder the "land of Babylon", just as Jeremiah prophesied 2,600 years ago.