International Legal Aspects of Iraq's Sustainable Development Dissertation

International Legal Aspects of Iraq's Sustainable Development - Dissertation Example On another note, decades of stagnation and sanctions in the Saddam regime meant that further oil and gas exploration was not possible. In addition to Iraq’s proven reserves of oil and gas, it is expected that another 45 billion to 100 billion barrels of crude oil remain unexplored1. On another note, it is ironic that for the fiscal years 2009 and 2010, Iraq’s central government had to face a fiscal deficit even though there are vast oil and gas reserves in the country’s territory. The lack of effective frameworks to explore and exploit the oil and gas resources has led the Iraqi nation to a miserable state such that the Iraqi’s long term sustainable development is highly impaired. This chapter will look into various forms of international petroleum agreements to observe how they have been implemented throughout the world and in Iraq’s case. Given the fact that Iraq changed regimes, the international petroleum agreements binding it internationally al so changed. ... chapter will also look into how political factors, both external an internal, tend to affect petroleum agreements, especially, in the context of the friction between the Kurdistan Regional Government and the federal Iraqi government. This chapter will then explore the environmental clauses of Iraqi petroleum agreements and ascertain its bearing on community development and economic development targets. Lastly, the chapter will look into the various legal challenges that sustainable development of oil and gas resources face in Iraq at the present. Evolution of International Petroleum Agreements International petroleum agreements (IPA) have evolved over time as the relationship between suppliers and producers has transformed through its highs and lows. In the modern day, IPAs are well established tools of business and a narrow range of IPAs tends to provide for most business arrangements between petroleum producers and suppliers. The various legal arrangements utilised under internatio nal law and IPA to benefit the petroleum producer and supplier are being discussed in order to evaluate what kinds of legal arrangements are more sustainable than others. This will further be applied in Iraq’s case to decipher how Saddam era petroleum agreements tend to differ from modern oil and gas contracts, especially with reference to sustainability and sustainable development for the people of Iraq. Concession Agreements Since most nation states tend to assume control of any mineral resources discovered in their territory, it is a direct consequence that they tend to represent any such interests under international law. The discovery of oil over the globe in the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century saw a number of nation states trying to conjure legal arrangements to