A tanker filled with a million barrels of legally contested Kurdish crude oil is beyond the reach of a U.S. court order to seize the cargo unless it comes closer to shore, a federal magistrate said Tuesday. For now, the embattled oil tanker, shipped in defiance of Iraq’s central government, remains in limbo 60 miles off the coast of Galveston, Texas. Federal magistrate judge Nancy Johnson on Monday ordered the U.S. Marshals to seize the oil if it came ashore. But at a hearing Tuesday, she said that the tanker hasn’t come within the boundaries of the state and the court’s authority. She also said Iraq, not Houston, was the proper venue to determine who owns the oil carried on the United Kalavrvta. “Seems to me this is not a matter for the U.S. courts to tell the government–the governments–of Iraq who owns what,” she said. […]