Of Borders and Oil: Iran and Iraq

OilWhen the American media talks about oil fields in the middle east, we usually talk about them in the way that assumes that they are relatively orderly and just sitting there in all their Jurassic glory waiting for someone to come along and dig, gulp, and burn the oil out of them. Maybe you picture the oil well drills that you’ve seen in Texas or somewhere like that, languidly pumping against a sunset backdrop, carefully churning out the highway blood of the American life. But you would be wrong. Not so much about the silhouette or the blood of American life part, but about the sitting and waiting patiently part. Nations fight over oil fields the way we in the U.S. fight over street corners to sell drugs, commercial time to sell products, or ad space in a crowded terminal to push wares. There is so much money in oil that it starts wars. Think about that.

Right now, military troops from both Iran and Iraq have staked out claimed territory on disputed oil field territory. That may sound like just another crazy thing happening in the constant stream of news and information from that fountain of chaos the Middle East, but this tells the story of why the region is the way it is at this specific point in history very well.

Along the Iran / Iraq border there are oil fields, and recently some Iranian soldiers advanced to take over one of the Iraqi oil wells. The rest reads like a scene out of my childhood games of war in abandoned fields in the neighborhood.

Iran took one over, Iraq asked them to go back to where they were. Iran’s soldiers went back just a little bit:

"The Iranian flag has been lowered. The Iranian troops have pulled back 50 meters, but they have not gone back to where they were before. The Iraqi government asked for the troops to go back to where they were," said Iraqi government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh.

This is not the kind of news you want to hear if you are part of the oil industry, as Iraq is holding high-profile oil well auctions right now, and big oil companies are arriving to bid on oil production contracts. Which may or may not have anything to do with Iran making a well-timed foray across the border, just to cause enough trouble that it hurts Iraqi investment but not so much that it runs the risk of actually getting in any

"Whether by coincidence or design, Tehran's incursion will raise the risks associated with these investments and ... border dispute resolution are likely to be a feature of the (firms') future negotiations," said PFC Energy analysts.

Yet another chapter of interwoven politics in a region where religion, finances, terrorism and oil all mix to create the potent cocktail that is the Middle East.

For now, it sounds like the situation resolved itself. Iran crossed the fuzzy border, Iraq said go back where you were, and it sounds like they are doing that. All the world got out of it is the lingering sense of anxiety and uncertainty that comes with sporadic and unprovoked military movements- what happened?

Photo Credit: lectroidmarc (via Flickr under CCL)