Sun, Oct 21 09:25 AM EDT
By Hamid Shalizi
AMU DARYA, Afghanistan (Reuters) - A Chinese firm has started extracting oil from the Amu Darya basin in northern Afghanistan, mining officials said, a key moment in the country's quest to pay its own way.
Afghanistan signed a 25-year contract with National Petroleum Corp (CNPC) last December covering drilling and a planned refinery in the northern provinces of Faryab and Sar-e-Pul. It is the first major oil production in the country.
"The company will extract 1,950 barrels per day, which will crucially help Afghanistan towards self-sustainability and economic independence," mining minister Wahidullah Shahrani told Reuters on Sunday as huge machines started drilling next to mud houses in remote Sar-e-Pul.
The venture with CNPC, which has invested hundreds of millions of dollars, was expected to produce billions of dollars over the next two decades - CNPC will pay a 15 percent royalty on oil, 20 percent corporate tax and give 50-70 percent of its profit from the project to the government.
From January 1, CNPC will extract 1.5 million barrels of oil annually, Shahrani said. Up to 87 million barrels of crude are estimated to be in Amu Darya.
Its inauguration on Sunday should lend confidence to nervous Chinese investors who have halted work on the $3 billion Aynak copper mine project in eastern Logar province, where insurgents trying to wreck the project have stepped up attacks. Afghan officials have been trying to convince the investors to restart.
As the end-2014 deadline looms for most foreign troops to leave, billions of dollars in aid is expected to dry up, leading Afghanistan to look for ways to become financially independent.
The Amu Darya basin should be able to supply Afghanistan with all its domestic oil needs eventually, said Weis Sherdel, director of the three Amu Darya oil blocks for the mining ministry.
The country imports around $3.5 billion of oil a year from Russia, Turkmenistan, the United Arab Emirates and Uzbekistan.
CNPC's Amu Darya crude will be sent to Turkmenistan where it will be refined and then sold to Afghan clients or abroad, Sherdel said. CNPC should complete work on an Afghan refinery in 2-3 years, officials said.
Shahrani said the development of the Amu Darya basin had provided Afghans with 2,100 jobs in the Sar-e-Pul province of 500,000 where unemployment is more than twice the national average, at 18 percent.
The venture was disrupted in June when men loyal to army chief of staff and Uzbek warlord General Abdul Rashid Dostum intimidated Chinese engineers in the area, demanding a share in proceeds, government officials in Kabul said.
Posters of Dostum, originally from nearby Jawzjan province, were hung around the surrounding villages and towns of the Amu Darya basin.
Chinese and Indian bidders have been frontrunners for deals to develop Afghan mineral deposits valued at up to $3 trillion, worrying Western firms that have hesitated to invest because of security concerns.
The country is now bracing for the end-October bid closure for oil deposits in the Afghan Tajik basin, also in the north and which, at an estimated 1.9 billion barrels, is the biggest ever oil project in Afghanistan.
Interest shown by Exxon Mobil (XOM.N) in July lent credence to hopes the government may be making progress in efforts to lessen its reliance on aid, though Shahrani told Reuters last month the U.S. group had not come to look at it.
(Writing by Amie Ferris-Rotman; Editing by Dan Lalor)
(amie.ferris-rotman@thomsonreuters.com)
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Suicide bomber kills 40 at Afghan mosque during Eid
Fri, Oct 26 05:07 AM EDT
By Bashir Ansari
MAZAR-E-SHARIF, Afghanistan (Reuters) - A suicide bomber killed at least 40 people in a mosque in Afghanistan's relatively peaceful north on Friday as worshippers gathered for prayers marking the Muslim Eid al-Adha holiday, police officials said.
The attack in Maimana, capital of Faryab province, also wounded 40, regional police chief General Abdul Khaliq Aqsai said, pinning the blame on the Taliban. A Taliban spokesman said they were investigating to find out who was responsible.
"The suicide bomber detonated explosives when our countrymen were congratulating each other on the Eid holiday," said Lal Mohammad Ahmadzai, spokesman for the police in the Afghan north, adding that almost half of the dead were police.
He said Aqsai appeared to be the target. "As soon as the police chief got in his vehicle, the bomber detonated his explosives," Ahmadzai said
About 20 bodies, some in police uniform, lay in front of the mosque's gates as smoke billowed above.
The attack, at around 9 a.m. local time on the first day of Eid, came just before President Hamid Karzai repeated his call for the Taliban to join the government.
"If you (Taliban) want to come to the government, you are welcome. You have rights as an Afghan and as a Muslim," he said in a speech marking Eid in the capital, Kabul.
Kabul and Washington have been seeking separate peace negotiations with the Taliban as the 2014 deadline looms for most foreign troops to leave.
Karzai condemned the mosque attack in a statement.
Violence is intensifying across the country 11 years into the NATO-led war, sparking concerns over how the 350,000-strong Afghan security forces, often the target of the Taliban, will manage once most foreign troops leave.
The Taliban, in a statement released to media on Friday, said two Afghan soldiers were behind the attack in western Farah province on Thursday that killed one Italian soldier.
One of them later joined the Taliban, the statement said, along with the policeman who killed two U.S. soldiers in southern Uruzgan province on Thursday.
That attack was the latest insider attack, when Afghan security forces turn their weapons on their foreign mentors and partners. At least 54 members of the NATO-led force have been killed this year so far in insider attacks, which have been eroding trust between Kabul and its western backers.
(Additional reporting by Mirwais Harooni, writing by Amie Ferris-Rotman; Editing by Nick Macfie)
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BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Two blasts hit a Baghdad Shi'ite neighborhood and a bus full of Iranian pilgrims on Saturday, killing at least 13 people on the second day of the Islamic Eid al Adha religious festival.
Sunni Islamist insurgents and al Qaeda's Iraq wing often target Shi'ites in an attempt to stir up the kind of sectarian tensions that dragged the country close to civil war in 2006-2007 though bombings and attacks have eased.
In one attack on Saturday, a roadside bomb planted near an open-air market killed seven people, including three children at a playground. Another blast killed six people when it hit a bus carrying Iranian pilgrims to a Baghdad shrine, police and hospital officials said.
"We heard an explosion, we rushed out, I saw children running, some with wounds and crying. We evacuated some of the injured people. Mothers were running to the place to find their children," Abu Ahmed, one witness said.
Police said blast on the Iranian pilgrims came from a bomb that had been attached to their bus. It exploded around 300 meters from a police checkpoint, sending the bus out of control before it flipped over on its side.
Insurgents have carried out at least one major attack a month since the last U.S. troops left in December. Iraqi officials worry Syria's crisis is bolstering Iraqi insurgents as Islamist fighters cross into the neighboring country.
The monthly death toll from attacks in Iraq doubled in September to 365, the highest number of casualties in two years, including a series of bombings targeting Shi'ite neighborhoods that killed more than 100 people.
Security officials had said they believe insurgents would try to carry out a large attack during the religious holiday, which started on Friday.
Car bombs exploded and mortars landed around the Shi'ite neighborhood of Shula, northwestern Baghdad, on Tuesday killing 8 people and wounded 28, and another person was killed by a mortar round in Kadhimiya area.
(Reporting by Raheem Salman; writing by Patrick Markey)
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