Kurdistan Regional Government
THU, 20 JUN 2013 10:36 Erbil, GMT +3
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Mr A — the oil lynchpin of Iraqi Kurdistan

TUE, 10 APR 2012 15:24 | The Sunday Times

Sunday Times — the oil lynchpin of Iraqi Kurdistan Ashti Hawrami is the oil minister of Kurdistan. He is the architect of the boom that has seen production rise from 2,000 barrels a day five years ago to 250,000 today in this once overlooked part of Iraq. He is also Mr A.

The Financial Services Authority’s decision last week to fine Ian Hannam for market abuse was littered with mentions of a mystery man who received the two emails that snared JP Morgan Cazenove’s star dealmaker.

The fact that it was Hawrami raises questions about the FSA’s interpretation of the law. He is not a fund manager or any kind of “market participant” in the traditional sense. He is, though, a revered figure in his homeland.

Hawrami was born in 1948 in Sulaymaniyah, Kurdistan’s second city, but has spent most of his career in Britain.

After leaving Baghdad University with a degree in oil engineering, he worked for the national oil company before moving to Scotland in 1975, where he spent seven years with British National Oil Corporation.

He gained a PhD in oil engineering while in Scotland, and then had a series of jobs at consultancies and engineering firms during the 1980s and 1990s.

In 1999, he was appointed chief executive of ECL Group, which he ran for several years. A quiet retirement at his mansion in Henley-on- Thames, Berkshire, was not to be. In 2006, the regional authorities in Kurdistan asked him to become the oil minister.

His task? Build an industry from scratch.

When he took control, there was one 1970s oil well in Kurdistan producing just 2,000 barrels a day.

He offered generous terms to entice explorers to the region, which had been ignored for decades. More than 40 signed up.

Many have since found oil, including Genel Energy, now run by Tony Hayward, the former BP boss. Gulf Keystone, another London-listed group, has seen its shares soar after it made a big find. At £1.9 billion, it is the largest company on AIM, the junior market.

Baghdad says, however, that the contracts Hawrami struck were illegal because they were not done through the federal ministry in Iraq.

The dispute between Baghdad and Kurdistan is worsening — this month the Kurds shut down exports to the rest of Iraq.

Under the constitution, all oil revenues must be booked through the federal ministry in Baghdad and then redistributed. The Kurds are entitled to 17%, which is their proportion of the overall population.

They claim that Baghdad has withheld at least $1.5 billion (£720m) that is rightfully theirs. The regional government has raised tensions further by giving refuge to Tariq al-Hashimi, the Iraqi vice-president who fled after the prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, accused him of running death squads. Maliki has demanded the Kurds hand him over. They have refused.

Hawrami, meanwhile, has continued to draw in billions of investment. His biggest coup came in November, when he announced that Exxon Mobil, then the world’s biggest oil company, had bought the rights to six exploration zones.

It was the first time one of the industry’s giants had dared to cross Baghdad by dealing with the Kurds. And the oil minister may be about to bag another big name — Total, the French group, is also close to signing an exploration deal.

Hawrami has set a target of producing 1m barrels a day within three years. Some dismiss that as fanciful. Even if it is, the boom he has engineered is extraordinary.

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