So much potential, but so little achieved. That could be the headline for Iraq's attempts to bring itself back into the big league of oil producers. With the world's third-largest oil reserves, and perhaps enough undiscovered reserves to make it second only to Saudi Arabia, Iraq is the only country that has the capacity to dramatically extend the industrialised world's access to cheap oil.
There is simply no where else in the world with so much oil, so close to existing pipelines and infrastructure, which can be extracted for less than $20 a barrel. "The indications are that there could be an awful lot of cheap oil to find," says Samuel Ciszuk, Middle East energy analyst at IHS Global Insight.
While Iraq is not alone in having large undeveloped fields, almost everywhere else around the world would be more expensive, sometimes a lot more. The cost of extraction offshore in West Africa or in the pre-salt fields offshore Brazil, those in remote land regions such as Siberia or the Alaskan Arctic, or of the hard-to-refine tar sands of Canada are all much higher than those that Iraq could, in theory, offer.
If Iraq does have the amount of oil that some believe and, if it is able to overcome political and legal difficulties to production, those who predict global oil at $100 a barrel in five years, yet alone $200, may still be proven wrong.
