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By Nick, May 13, 2013 10:52 am

The construction of an expensive new plutonium pit facility has been abandoned. Will it be replaced a collection of smaller buildings?

Thanks in large part to lawsuits filed by the Los Alamos Study Group, last year the Obama administration halted the construction of the Chemistry and Metallurgy Research Replacement Nuclear Facility (CMRR-NF) at Los Alamos National Laboratory. The research for which it was earmarked was  on plutonium pits, which is where the chain reaction of a nuclear weapons occurs. Even if you believe in nuclear weapons, the need for new pits is nonexistent because they’re noted for their longevity.

How difficult it is to discontinue researching and manufacturing plutonium pits is a microcosm for how the nuclear weapons-industrial complex itself endures. In February at Global Security Newswire, Elaine Grossman reported that, without the CMRR-NF, Los Alamos would

… instead permanently parcel out work to an array of smaller buildings. [The] institution’s director said. … “I’m concerned that in the current fiscal crisis, it may no longer be practical to plan and build very large-scale nuclear facilities,” Charles McMillan, who heads the New Mexico research site, said at a three-day conference on nuclear deterrence in Arlington, Va. “A new path forward is needed.”

On May 7, a Los Alamos Study Group [LASG] press release stated:

After more than a year since a halt to new funding was announced for [the CMRR-NF], a few details about the latest plan to construct a large-scale “pit” factory complex have begun to emerge.

Note that McMillan’s use of the phrase “very large-scale nuclear facilities” referred to the two main buildings of the planned CMRR-NF. The complex that LASG refers to is smaller buildings, as Ms. Grossman reported. More from the press release:

It is now clear that the “interim” “plutonium sustainment” plan [in lieu of the CMRR-NF – RW] of last year is but the first part of a much larger, multibillion dollar plan spanning approximately two decades, which could easily exceed CMRR-NF in final scope, cost, and possibly in size. 

The new plan aims not just to replace the capabilities once envisioned for … CMRR-NF but also to supplement or replace some the most dangerous and demanding capabilities of LANL’s large main plutonium facility.  

This year’s plan is certainly much larger than the … “interim” plan … in pit production capacity, physical scale, environmental disruption, cost, and duration [and] includes everything in the “interim plan” plus construction of underground laboratory and production “modules” connected by “tunnels” to the [large main plutonium facility].

Furthermore, states LASG Director Greg Mello:

“There are as yet no firm mission requirements, no project definition, no total estimated cost, no requested line item, no analysis of alternatives, no environmental impact statement [EIS], and no schedule for this project. Despite these deficiencies, despite wasting $ 500 M and ten years on the last plan, and despite NNSA’s abysmal management record, the agency now claims that hundreds of millions of dollars must be spent each year, starting right now, to get this ‘non-project project’ going.”

Mello then hints at how difficult it is to put the nail in the coffin of these projects. Like monsters or slashers in horror movies, they have a discouraging habit of rising up like phoenixes just when you think you’ve killed them dead.

“No U.S. warhead requires new pits, so none of this is about maintaining warheads. Pit aging is not even mentioned in the April 8 letter as a driver for this project.” 

What purpose would new plutonium pits serve then? From the press release again.

The need for new pit production is tied to these two proposed Life Extension Projects (LEPs), which congressional and administration officials have described to us as, essentially, new warheads: 

• A proposed W78/W88 “interoperable” Air Force/Navy warhead for land-based and sea-based missiles. Depending on the design chosen and the size of the “build,” [it] might require pit production. 

• The proposed “Long-Range Stand-Off” (LRSO) missile warhead [which] too might require pit production.

The spirit of boondoggle flees the dying host of one project, only to seek out another to possess. We can never truly drive a stake may never be drive into nuclear weapons until the Unholy Trinity of waste, pork, and campaign financing is exorcised from the body politic. 

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By Nick, May 1, 2013 7:20 pm

South Gas Company, Shell and Mitsubishi today officially announced the commencement of operations of Basrah Gas Company, which will be the largest gas project in Iraq’s history and the world’s largest flares reduction project.

Basrah Gas Company is a 25-year incorporated Joint Venture between Iraq’s South Gas Company holding 51% of its shares, Shell 44% and Mitsubishi Corporation 5%. The Joint Venture captures associated gas that is currently being flared from three oil fields in southern Iraq – Rumaila, West Qurna 1 and Zubair.

Iraq has estimated natural gas reserves totaling 112.6 trillion cubic feet, the 10th largest in the world. However, due to decades of wars and sanctions that led to the deterioration of the gas infrastructure, preliminary estimates indicate that Iraq’s losses from gas flaring could amount to billions of dollars annually.

Mr. Ali Khudair, South Gas Company Director General said:

“Basrah produces only around 1 billion cubic feet a day of associated gas and some 700 million cubic feet are being flared, which is wasting millions of dollars of the country’s resources every day.

“Partnering with world class companies like Shell and Mitsubishi will help Iraq fulfil its goal of developing its gas infrastructure to eliminate flaring and provide fuel to the Iraqi industry, power generation as well as income to the state.”

Under the agreement signed with the Iraqi Ministry of Oil, BGC will sell processed gas to state-owned South Gas Company. BGC will be dedicated to the rehabilitation and upgrade of the current facilities to put them back to work safely as well as building new assets which is expected to increase the production capacity from a current 400 million cubic feet per day to 2 billion cubic feet per day.

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By Nick, April 30, 2013 2:50 pm

Hill International has announced that it has been awarded a contract from the State Housing Commission (SHC) of the Iraq Ministry of Construction and Housing to provide project management oversight (PMO) consulting services in connection with various housing developments throughout Iraq.

The two-year contract has an estimated value to Hill of approximately $ 5.7 million.

Raouf S. Ghali (pictured), President of Hill’s Project Management Group (International), said:

​”We are honored to be working for the SHC and helping to build housing for the Iraqi people.“

Hill International, with 3,700 employees in 100 offices worldwide, provides program management, project management, construction management and construction claims and consulting services.

(Source: Hill International)

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By Nick, March 29, 2013 7:34 am

By John Lee.

The Basra Gas Company (BGC) — a joint venture between the state-run South Gas Company (SGC), Shell and Mitsubishi — is processing around 400 million cubic feet per day (mcfd) of gas, and is on track to treat 2 billion cubic feet per day by 2017.

SGC general director, Ali Khudhier, told Reuters:

“Iraq should stop importing LPG in second half of 2014. We are producing now around 2,000 tonnes of LPG and we expect to reach production of 3,000 tonnes in second half of 2014.

“The produced LNG will be exported to east Asia by ships.“

The $ 17-billion project started processing small amounts of raw gas in mid-2012, and is now producing gas suitable for power plants along with liquid petroleum gas (LPG), cutting Iraq’s fuel import requirements.

Providing Iraq’s own modest gas needs are met first, the deal also gives BGC the right to build a liquefied natural gas (LNG) export terminal fed with at least 600 mcfd of gas in a few years time.

(Source: Reuters)

(Picture: Gas flaring at Rumaila)

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By Nick, March 16, 2013 6:12 am

Shady Khalloul Risha holds his son Aram in his lap and speaks to him in a language that most Israelis are familiar with, but which only a few understand. The child responds the way children aged three and a half do. Shady is proud of his firstborn; Aram is really a special child. At home, in the village of Jish (Gush Halav), not far from the Israeli-Lebanese border, the infant has been exposed to three languages from birth. His father speaks to him in Aramaic. His mother, born in Ukraine, chats with him in Russian. And his grandparents, Shady’s parents, address him in Arabic.

“I am a Maronite; the language of my ancestors is Aramaic,” Shady says, “and I want to resurrect it. Rather than telling others to do it, I decided to revive the language in my own home. I speak to him in Aramaic, and he replies in the same language.”

Isn’t it important to you to teach him Hebrew, the majority language?

“Sure, but he will learn it anyway; it will happen by itself. After all, he is growing up in Israel. English, too, he will learn by himself when he grows up. His brother Jacob is eight months now, and we are doing the same with him. In a few years, the two of them will be communicating in Aramaic.”

Aramaic is the second language after Hebrew used in the Jewish scriptures. It is the language the Kaddish (sanctification) prayer is written in. It is also the language of the Talmud and used extensively in the Bible, especially in the books of the prophets Ezra and Daniel. Few Israelis are conversant in Aramaic, and these are for the most part ultra-Orthodox graduates of rabbinical colleges, Yemenite Jews or Jews from Kurdistan, who’d spoken the language in their countries of origin.

However, Aramaic is not only a part of Jewish history; it is also the language of prayer of the Maronite Christians. In recent years, its use among the Christian population in Israel has been spreading, in a large part thanks to Shady, an IT professional aged 37, who decided to go all the way with his ethnic affiliation.

Shady serves as chairman of the Aramaic Association in Israel and is considered the moving spirit of the association. He grew up in an Arabic-speaking environment, but unlike most Christians in Israel, who see themselves as a part of Arab civilization, he chose to emphasize his other ethnic identity.

“My ethnicity is Aramaean, I am a Maronite Christian and my religion is Christian,” he tells us. He speaks Arabic as a means of communication, no more.

“I am like the Jews in Arab countries, who spoke Arabic and prayed in Hebrew, or the Muslims in America, who speak English and pray in the language of the Quran. There are 12 million Maronites in the world today and, wherever they are, they all speak the language of the local natives. Thus, for instance, five million Maronites are living in Brazil. They speak Portuguese, but they pray in Aramaic. And this is the case with Maronites the world over. The language that unites them, the language of liturgy and worship, is one and the same language.”

You are living in an Arab village; your mother tongue is Arabic. Don’t you see yourself as a member of the great Arab nation?

“No. I am a part of the Aramaean people. We do not have a country, but we have a language and a history and a heritage.”

The Maronites speak the western dialect of modern Aramaic, whose pronunciation is unlike that of the eastern dialect of Aramaic, commonly spoken in Aram Naharayim (Mesopotamia). They have a unique writing system, developed over centuries, but which ripened into its present-day form in the 14th century. The Aramaeans have three TV stations across the world, broadcasting news as well as entertainment and sports programs via satellite. Two of these stations operate from Sweden. The third, which broadcasts in the eastern dialect of Aramaic, operates from the Kurdish region in Iraq.

Several years ago, Shady and his brother Amir established in their village an Aramaic language school that offers courses free of charge. Students in the lower school grades learn the language in church, usually on Fridays. They read, sing and write in Aramaic. There is also one class for adults. However, the Khalloul brothers did not think this is enough. They appealed to the Ministry of Education, asking for and receiving an allocation of teaching hours for Aramaean heritage in the schools in their village. Once they got it, they — with the assistance of Knesset Members Israel Hasson (Kadima) and Yariv Levin (Likud) — initiated a bill for the recognition of the Aramaean minority in Israel as a nation in itself, the way the Arabs, Circassians and Druze are recognized. The bill was submitted for a vote in the Ministerial Committee for Legislation during the tenure of the 18th Knesset, but was blocked by Minister of Culture and Sport Limor Livnat.

“We hope that, once approved, this bill will serve as ‘a Light unto the nations,’” Shady says. “That is, once you recognize us as an ethnic minority, the Arabs, too, will recognize us and realize that our people are not extinct. Both Arabic and Hebrew are derived from the Aramaic language. These are all Semitic languages. And their common origin brings the peoples speaking them closer together.”

More than 10 thousand Maronites are currently living in Israel. Two thousand of them are former South Lebanon Army (SLA) combatants and their family members who moved to Israel following the withdrawal of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) from Lebanon in 2000. Shady Khalloul Risha himself is a descendant of a displaced family from Kafr Biram, a Christian village that was the center of the Maronite community in the Land of Israel under the British rule. In 1948 the IDF expelled the inhabitants of the village, along with their Muslim neighbors from the nearby village of Ikrit, exiling them to Lebanon. After a week, they were allowed to temporarily return to Jish. This provisional solution has been going on ever since. Five years later, the IDF demolished the village houses, leaving their residents nowhere to return to.

To this very day, the Israeli authorities refuse to respond favorably to the requests by the displaced inhabitants of Kafr Biram and their Ikrit neighbors to allow them to return home to their villages. In recent years, each summer, the youths of Jish organize a camp for the children of the Maronite community on the ruins of the village, on a site located between the old church, which has been preserved, and the ancient synagogue of Biram.

The Maronites are affiliated with the Maronite Aramaean Antioch church, based in Lebanon, whose spiritual leader is Maronite Archbishop Bechara al-Ra’i. However, although their spiritual center is in the “Land of the Cedars” (Lebanon), most of them are scattered around the world, across five continents.

“Lebanon was the only country in the world that the Maronites ever dreamed of turning into their ethnic homeland,” says Risha. “So far, the dream has slipped away, but there are still those among us who hope that the dream will come true.”

He pulls out a children’s book written in Aramaic and reads stories to Aram. His house is full of Aramaic-language textbooks, holy books and various other publications sent from friends in Sweden. He shows us his Aramaic bookshelf and tells us of his vision.

“I aspire to establish a settlement in Biram, as a belated compensation for the expulsion. We had 12,000 dunams (3,000 acres) there, and on most of the area Israeli settlements were set up. We are asking for no more than 3,000 dunams (about 750 acres) of our village lands back. We will establish a new village there that will preserve our Aramaean heritage in the country. The way there are Arab, Circassian and Druze villages in Israel, one Aramaean village may also be established here.”

By Jacky Hugi
AL Monitor

Assyrian International News Agency

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By Nick, March 12, 2013 10:13 pm

By John Lee.

Iraq’s Petroleum Contracts and Licensing Directorate (PCLD) has announced that seven international oil companies (IOCs) have been selected to bid for the development of its Nasiriya oilfield and refinery:

1. Zarubezhneft, from Russia (Up and Downstream);
2. CNPC, from China (Downstream);
3. Brown Energy, from US (Downstream);
4. Reliance Industries, from India (Up & Downstream);
5. Lukoil, from Russia (Downstream);
6. Total, from France (Downstream);
7. JGC and Tonen General,  from Japan (Up & Downstream).

Fourteen companies submitted their qualifications for the Nasiriya Integrated Project between 1st November 2012 and 28th February 2013, and they were judged on four criteria — Technical, Financial, Legal, and HSE.

The eventual winner will develop the giant Nasiriya oilfield and build a new 300,000 bpd refinery.

Reuters reports that the Ministry of Oil plans to hold a roadshow to discuss the contract model on 8th and 9th April in Amman, Jordan.

(Sources: Ministry of Oil, Reuters)

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By Nick, February 27, 2013 3:36 am

Metito, a leader in intelligent water management solutions, has won a $ 6.8 million deal for a water treatment plant in Iraq.

The company has signed an agreement with F&B Investment for the design, build, selection and supply of all mechanical and electrical equipment for the wastewater treatment plant in south of Kufa, Iraq.

The project, initiated by Najaf Governorate, will serve the sewer and storm water treatment needs for the increasing population in the area and is designed to accommodate a capacity of 50,000 cu m/day, said a statement.

The project will utilise Turbo4bio, a new technology that guarantees a high energy-efficient wastewater treatment process with a small footprint. Turbo4bio (T4b) stands for ‘Turbo-Reactor for intense Biofilm production’ and it is suitable for treatment of municipal and low to medium load industrial wastewater, from which it produces a very high quality effluent with very low sludge production, close to zero.

The unique design features of the system provide the self-cleaning capability of the T4b-Turbo Reactor against any possible clogging, making it almost maintenance-free, it said.

Moustafa Hasan, general manager Metito Iraq, Jordan & Syria, said:

“The Iraqi government strives to improve the infrastructure across the country. The water and wastewater industry is growing rapidly and steadily in Iraq, reflecting the needs of the expanding urban areas and the increasing population.

“This is done without any compromise to the quality of deliverables required by the managing bodies, and Metito is therefore honoured to be partnering with F&B Investment in playing a role in the sustainable development of such an important and strategic country.“

(Source: TradeArabia)

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By Nick, January 29, 2013 4:08 am

International developer EPGI has announced that they have been awarded the development management contract to develop and build the new Basra Oil and Gas International Free Zone in Iraq.

The project is the second largest of its kind in the world covering over 11 million square metres, and is strategically located near the southern Iraq oil and gas production areas. The development comprise of a mixture of uses dedicated to the oil and gas industries, including industrial, warehousing, oil storage, commercial and residential accommodation, as well as ancillary uses, and will have its own dedicated customs and future air transport facilities.

The project will be developed by BIOGH (Basra International Oil and Gas Hub Limited) in joint venture with the Iraqi Free Zone Authority (FZA), an independent authority under the Ministry of Finance.

The Free Trade Zone is located within 125 kilometers of over 70% of Iraq’s proven oil and gas reserves. It has excellent access to air, rail, and roads, and is immediately adjacent to the port of Khor al Zubair. It is 35 kilometers from Basra City Centre, 30 kilometers from Basra International Airport, 15 kilometers from Umm Qasre Port and is within 30 kilometers from the Kuwaiti border crossing. The proximity of the Free Trade Zone to southern Iraq’s oil and gas density is considered a key factor of its development.

The Free Trade Zone (FTZ) will operate within the terms of Iraq’s Free Zone Law and its regulations, as being outside Iraq’s custom borders. Goods, equipment, and machinery that is imported to, or exported from, the free zone are not subject to duties or custom controls. As part of the Free Zone Authority, there is no VAT, no capital gains or corporation taxes. Off shore banking is permitted and there are no foreign exchange restrictions.

“The Free Trade Zone is considered pivotal in encouraging foreign investments, transferring technologies, and creating employment. It has been estimated that BIOGH and the FTZ will employ approximately 10,000 Iraqi nationals over an initial period of 12 years,” says Richard Cotton, the International Marketing Director for BIOGH.

Iraq is one of the world’s largest producers of oil and has proven reserves to remain a long-term leading supplier to the global markets.

EPGI has the development management agreement with BIOGH to deliver the development to the market. EPGI is a privately owned international real estate firm that has provided the highest level of quality, service and value to its clients and investors for almost 20 years.

(Source: BIOGH)

Iraq Business News

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By Nick, January 24, 2013 9:31 pm

By John Lee.

The Iraqi Ministry of Communications says a submarine cable project linking Iraq with other countries has been completed.

The deputy minister of communications, Ameer al-Bayyati, told Al-Shorfa that the two-year, $ 36-million project, was completed by Gulf Bridge International, and will provide internet, telephone and television services at lower prices and with higher quality.

(Source: Al-Shorfa)

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By Nick, January 15, 2013 8:54 pm

By John Lee.

Iraq’s Petroleum Contracts & Licensing Directorate (PCLD), part of the Ministry of Oil, has announced that following requests received from interested companies the deadline for submitting qualification information for the Nasiriya Integrated Project has been postponed to 28th February 2013.

Documents sent by DHL are accepted provided that they have been sent before the deadline.

PCLD appreciates any questions and inquiries concerning the qualification process and qualification fee payment, and can be contacted by e-mail at: dg_pcld@oil.gov.iq .

The PCLD will announce and inform all qualified companies of subsequent steps in due course.

(Source: Ministry of Oil)

Iraq Business News