That stalemate was broken in October 2011, when Exxon Mobil, which was already developing an enormous oil field under a contract with Baghdad, decided to defy the ban and sign contracts with the Kurdish government, including three swaths of disputed land.
Now, however, the enormous oil field off its shore is moving into terminal decline.
The companies were instead offered areas where reserves are not clearly established: one area south of the enormous Ghawar oil field; another by the Red Sea; and a third, called Shaybah, in the south of the country.
China wants to obtain 15 billion to 20 billion additional barrels of foreign oil reserves over the next few years, so it also has its eyes on an enormous heavy oil field in the Orinoco Belt, in the northeast part of Venezuela.
A consortium of BP and China National Petroleum Company has agreed to increase output of the enormous Rumaila oil field to 2.85 million barrels a day, and will receive a $2 premium for every barrel the field produces over a baseline established by the Iraqi government.
On both sides of Coalinga the road passes through the enormous Coalinga Oil Field.
While chairwoman of the state oil giant, Petrobras, she also helped write the government's new oil laws, which would give the oil giant the primary role in developing the enormous new deepwater oil fields that could be a cash cow for the nation.
Drilling rigs and pumping equipment pepper the landscape, and enormous trucks carrying oil field supplies rumble down narrow, dusty roads.
According to the article, Mr. Galbraith "received rights to an enormous stake in at least one of Kurdistan's oil fields in the spring of 2004".
There is an enormous gas potential in the Middle East associated with the major oil fields in the Arabian-Iranian basin.
