Fight for Iraq's future targets 90-year-old Kirkuk oil field

#oilwire - The latest battle for Iraq’s future is unfolding around the country’s oldest oil field. Federal government troops pushed back forces from the semi-autonomous Kurdish region with a rapid thrust into Kirkuk province in northern Iraq, breaking a stand-off over the long-disputed area. Baghdad wants to reassert control of the area’s oil deposits from Kurdish fighters, who seized the territory and its capital city, also called Kirkuk, to ward off Islamic State militants in 2014. The Kurds, who voted overwhelmingly for independence in a referendum last month, see the resources as a financial lifeline for a future state. Kirkuk’s oil, discovered by the forebears of BP Plc and Total SA in 1927, lies in one of the Middle East’s great fields. Its long anticline -- the ridge in the Earth’s crust trapping the accumulation of oil -- can be easily seen from the air, running straight through Kirkuk city, home to almost a million people.

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