1. Petrofac Hopes To Turn Page After UK Bribery Conviction

    ...UK-based services firm Petrofac is hoping to put a scandal-riven few years behind it after a UK court on 4 October found it guilty on seven counts of bribery involving payments of $44mn to secure $3.5bn of contracts in Gulf countries between 2011 and 2017. In a case brought by the UK’s Se...

    Volume: 64
    Issue: 40
    Published at Fri, 08 Oct 2021
  2. Kuwait Enters New Era Following Emir’s Death

    ...approved by the National Assembly. Earlier in Emir Sabah’s reign Sheikh Nasser Mohammed Al Sabah and Sheikh Ahmed Fahd Al Sabah were two leading candidates but the pair have since fallen out of favor. The 79-year old Sheikh Nasser Mohammed was forced out of office as prime minister in November 2011...

    Volume: 63
    Issue: 40
    Published at Fri, 02 Oct 2020
  3. Iraqi Government Formation Gathers Pace

    ...suffered a major stroke in December 2012. Mr Salih is not as formidable an operator as Mr Talabani – who passed away last year – but he is cut from the same cloth as his former mentor. He served as prime minister of the Kurdistan Region from 2009 to 2011. Mr Salih was put forward as a ca...

    Volume: 61
    Issue: 40
    Published at Fri, 05 Oct 2018
  4. Libya: Another ‘Historic’ Opportunity For Peace

    ...14, what was arguably a further split into three ushered in by the LPA in December 2015, or the collapse in 2011 of the regime of ousted dictator Mu’ammar al- Qadhafi. Combining inclusivity with consensus will be a tough trick for the UN to pull off. HISTORIC DIVISIONS For most of the past six ye...

    Volume: 60
    Issue: 40
    Published at Fri, 06 Oct 2017
  5. Airstrikes Hit Syria’s Murky Wartime Oil And Gas Sector

    ...e entry of US-led coalition warplanes into the Syrian melee. In fact, Syria suffered from years of decline in its oil sector even prior to the outbreak of war in 2011, which then reduced oil and gas production to a mere trickle. Declining oil revenues helped put Syria on the path to civil unrest an...

    Volume: 57
    Issue: 40
    Published at Fri, 03 Oct 2014
  6. Libya: No Light At The End Of The Tunnel

    ...fore the 2011 revolution was 1.6mn b/d.   In an interview with the Beirut-daily al-Hayat, Mr Tariq Mitri, the UN Secretary- General’s Special Representative in Libya, noted that the government has so far failed to disarm the public and rebuild the army and police forces and that it has th...

    Volume: 56
    Issue: 40
    Published at Fri, 04 Oct 2013
  7. Baghdad-Ankara Relationship At Crossroads

    ...rkey in 2011. Turkey is aiming to break into the list of the world’s top ten economies by 2023, and Ankara is targeting Iraq in general and the KRG in particular, as strategic fuel sources for this planned economic expansion (MEES, 28 May).   Turkey’s economic boom since the late-1990s has be...

    Volume: 55
    Issue: 40
    Published at Fri, 28 Sep 2012
  8. Kuwait Political Stalemate Seen Continuing After Electoral Law Upheld

    ...e parliamentary finance committee and the oil ministry started probes into Shell’s Enhanced Technical Services Agreement (ETSA). Being conducted for state-owned upstream firm Kuwait Oil Company (KOC), the ETSA is to help develop northern Jurassic gas projects (MEES, 8 August 2011). The enquiry looks at...

    Volume: 55
    Issue: 40
    Published at Fri, 28 Sep 2012
  9. NIOC Hit With US Sanctions As EU Looks At Further Measures

    ...th Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) was a basis for the decision. The US drew attention to the appointment in July 2011 of Rostam Qasemi as Iran’s Petroleum Minister – he was a former IRGC Brigadier General.   The US Treasury also said that evidence of the NIOC-IRGC link was an in...

    Volume: 55
    Issue: 40
    Published at Fri, 28 Sep 2012