ABSTRACT
Aside from the linkage to the broader issue of international law and the rights of indigenous, native, or ancient populations to natural resources on ancestral lands, any complete understanding of the much narrower Iraqi legal situation concerning oil and gas in the disputed Kurdish territories must include information regarding both article 23 of the 2008 Provincial Elections Law and relevant language extant in the proposed Federal Oil and Gas Framework Law. While the details of the Federal Oil and Gas Framework Law that relate exclusively to all those matters surrounding the exploration for and production of hydrocarbons generally are not examined here, they have been looked at in an earlier volume and compared to corresponding provisions from the KRG Oil and Gas Law (No. 22) of 2007. 1 What is taken up regarding the framework law in the pages of this chapter is limited to what that law offers on the single question of legal control over oil and gas in the disputed Kurdish territories. Regarding article 23 of the Provincial Elections Law, it will be recalled that it had been referenced in the concluding section of Chapter 1. The context there set forth the various efforts to resolve the disputed territories matter made by the High Committee on the Implementation of Article 140, and the additional efforts made by both UNAMI’s Staffan de Mistura and his successor, Ad Melkert, and the so-called article 23 Committee. Article 23 of the Provincial Elections Law—which basically had the effect of exempting Kirkuk, but also wound up being applied so as to exempt Dahok, Erbil, and Suleimaniya as well from the federal provincial elections scheme—grew out of a combination of two things: first, the need for provincial elections in 2009, given the notion that such be held on a four-year cycle, with the last having been in 2005; and, second, sensitivity over the status of Kirkuk. Clearly, the Provincial Elections Law of 2008 could have simply provided that each and every province or governorate in Iraq must hold elections for their appropriate local governing bodies by a date certain, and in accordance with specified requirements. The hotly disputed nature of the status of Kirkuk, and the jealous protection by the Kurds of what they considered their own governmental prerogatives, conjoined to result in a federal Provincial Elections Law that, through article 23, created an unusual situation casting illumination on the controversy over certain disputed territories, and, perhaps at least inferentially, providing additional insight on the matter of legal control over oil and gas situated in such territories.
