The Kirkuk Oilfield

This oilfield in northern Iraq was discovered in 1927 and has been operated by the Iraq Petroleum Company since 1934. Its known reserves are of the order of 10 billion barrels. There is evidence that management of the resource during the regime of Saddam Hussein was unsatisfactory and led to heavy losses. There are pipelines from Kirkuk which pass through part of Turkey and convey crude oil to the Mediterranean coast for transfer to tankers.

The city of Kirkuk has a racially varied population and has for very many generations been home to a large number of Kurds. By way of background, up to WW1 the Kurds occupied parts of Iraq, Iran, Armenia and Syria and kept herds of goats and sheep. Their way of life was brought to an end with the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire and they became a dispossessed race as no territory was allocated to them; no part of the area they had previously occupied became ‘Kurdistan’ and that term, though widely used to mean the regions in which Kurds currently live, has no political or constitutional basis. Kurds are Shiite Muslims and have their own language and distinctive dress. They currently number 15 to 20 millions.

Many of the Kurds expelled by Saddam Hussein have returned to Kirkuk and are asserting oil rights. At present, when the US is occupying Iraq, both the Kurdish militia and the opposing Iraqi militia have large numbers of troops in or close to Kirkuk. There are however persons of Kurdish race in the Iraqi militia and the extent to which the Kurds have infiltrated the Iraqi militia could be a decisive factor in any attempt by one side or the other to gain possession of Kirkuk after US presence in Iraq ceases. Meanwhile, those Kurds who want to see a formally constituted Kurdistan hold that the whole of Kirkuk should be within it. Neighbouring Turkey, which has itself over the decades had aspirations to a share in the oil resources of Kirkuk, has expressed a fear that seizure of the oilfields by the Kurds would finance a war for the creation of Kurdistan as a result of which they themselves would have to cede some land to the Kurds.