Iraq’s Basra Provincial Council is calling on the Iraqi government to take Exxon to task over its decision to evacuate its engineers from its West Qurna oilfield in the Basra province. Although the council said that Exxon’s evacuation did not disrupt overall production in Basra, Anwar Mudalal, a member of the Council, said that “the Minister of Oil, however, should take legal procedures against the company because it has violated its contract with Iraq,” according to basnews . Mudalal added that most of the oilfields in Basra are managed by Iraqi officers, and not foreign personnel, thus its resilience to the shocks of a major player such as Exxon pulling its engineering staff out of country—an action that Iraq’s Oil Minister Thamer Ghadhban claimed was “ unacceptable and unjustified .” ExxonMobil began to evacuate its engineers working on Iraq’s West Qurna 1 field a couple weeks ago after the […]