KurdistanObserver.com Dallas Oil Company Approved to Drill in Kurdistan September 10, 2007 The New York Times By BLOOMBERG NEWS The Hunt Oil Company of Dallas has become the first international company to receive permission to drill for oil in the Kurdistan region of Northern Iraq since the local government issued an oil-and-gas law last month. Under its contract with the Kurdistan regional government, Hunt, a closely held company, will join the Impulse Energy Corporation to survey for oil in the Dihok district this year before drilling its first well in 2008. The information was contained in a Hunt Oil statement posted yesterday on Ame Info, a business Web site based in Dubai. The Kurdistan region has pursued an energy policy independent of Iraq’s national government since 2003, when the United States led an invasion to topple Saddam Hussein. Jeanne Phillips, a spokeswoman for Hunt Oil, said it could not discuss the terms of the deal. The regional government said in June that it would offer 40 oil-and-gas blocks for exploration as part of a plan to increase daily production to a million barrels in the next five years. Iraq has an estimated 115 billion barrels of proven oil reserves, the third largest in the world behind Saudi Arabia and Iran, according to BP. A sizable portion of the country’s oil reserves are in the north.       Copyright © 2002, Kurdistan Observer