Kurdistan and Iraq Oil Agreements

....It seems the future looks bright for Kurdish oil plays:

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Iraq-Agreement-Made-With-bloomberg-1981391052.html?x=0&l=1

The accord will be approved by the Iraqi parliament’s Oil and Energy Committee as soon as it’s received, committee member Bahaa al-Din Ahmad was cited as saying in the Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty article.

The agreement “neither undermined the powers of the central government nor undercut the rights of” the Kurdish authority, Ahmad said, according to the article.

Kurdistan includes three regions in the country’s north: Erbil, Dohuk and Suleimaniah, governed by an elected parliament and 19 government ministries overseeing everything from agriculture to education to tourism, according to the regional authority’s website.

The central government counts the Kurdistan Regional Authority as one of its 19 administrative divisions, according to the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency’s website.

The accord has ended the risk that foreign oil producers such as Exxon, Marathon Oil Corp. and Gulf Keystone Petroleum Ltd. (GKP) would be stripped of some oilfield projects as punishment for signing contracts in the Kurdish-controlled region, two people familiar with the talks told Bloomberg News yesterday.

Exxon, the world’s biggest company by market value, is the latest Western entrant into Kurdistan. Others include Vallares Plc, the explorer founded by former BP Plc Chief Executive Officer Tony Hayward, Afren Plc (AFR), Hess Corp., Murphy Oil Corp., Marathon Oil Corp. and Repsol YPF SA.