MULTIMEDIA: Key Iraqi Oil Fields
REPORT: Distribution of Oil Fields
and the New Constitution, 2006 (pdf)

IRAQ: UPDATE

On January 10, at a formal launch event in Baghdad attended by government leaders, members of Iraqi civil society and international groups, Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki announced that the country was joining the Extractive Industry Transparency Initiative (EITI), a huge step toward the efficient and open management of its turbulent oil industry. The decision establishes Iraq as the Middle East's most important champion of the principles of transparency and accountability in the management of oil revenues. The EITI standard of government partnership with citizens will be a powerful tool in the struggle for national and regional stability.

TRANSPARENCY SNAPSHOT

Iraq, a nation of 25 million people, holds the second largest oil reserves in the world, estimated to exceed 300 billion barrels. While Iraq enjoyed a period of relative prosperity and modernization in the 1950s and 1960s, its more recent history of pervasive violence, mismanagement and abuse has denied the people of Iraq any lasting benefits from this wealth. Today, a nation mired in conflict, Iraq suffers severe shortages of fuel and power, despite the fact that it literally "swims on a lake of oil."

The widespread and systematic abuse of the country's vast resources has its causes in decades of authoritarian rule, war and international sanctions. The collapse of the state in the aftermath of the 2003 invasion, and the resulting security and legitimacy deficits, have only exacerbated the problem.
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EXTRACTIVE INDUSTRIES

With proven reserves of over 115 billion barrels of oil and estimated reserves upward of 300 billion barrels, Iraq has the potential to be one of the largest oil producers in the world, second only to Saudi Arabia. Indeed, Iraq's reserves are the planet's single largest untapped pool of traditional (easily extractable) oil.

About 75% of Iraq's proven oil reserves are concentrated in the three southern governorates, with 25% in the middle and the north. The Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) controls about 6% of these northern reserves (or 15%, if the Kirkuk area is included).

Iraq has other mineral resources, including largely unexplored reserves of natural gas, phosphates and other minerals, but these are dwarfed by its oil wealth.
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