Rather like the man falling from the 20th floor of an office block saying ‘So far, so good’ when asked how he is doing, so several Iraq oil industry watchers have characterised the inexorable move towards a unified oil law being rolled out across the country. Untroubled though the journey may be, however, the thud at the end of it is likely to mark a stark new reality from which the West is excluded. The journey began back on 25 September 2017 with the non-binding but much-trumpeted vote on independence for the people of the semi-autonomous…
