Iraqi Sunni Lands Show New Oil and Gas Promise

Brig. Gen. John R. Allen, left, at a well atop a deposit of oil and natural gas in the desert of Iraq’s western Anbar Province, near Syria.

By JAMES GLANZ
Published: February 19, 2007
Huge petroleum deposits have long been known in Iraq’s Kurdish north and Shiite south. But now, Iraq has substantially increased its estimates of the amount of oil and natural gas in deposits on Sunni lands after quietly paying foreign oil companies tens of millions of dollars over the past two years to re-examine old seismic data across the country and retrain Iraqi petroleum engineers.
The development is likely to have significant political effects: the lack of natural resources in the central and western regions where Sunnis hold sway has fed their disenchantment with the nation they once ruled. And it has driven their insistence on a strong central government, one that would collect oil revenues and spread them equitably among the country’s factions, rather than any division of the country along sectarian regional boundaries.
New estimates of the amount of oil and natural gas on Sunni lands are likely to have significant political effects.
After all ladies and gentlemen, isn't this what we're there for?

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