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News broke last month that Chevron had signed an oil deal with the semi-autonomous Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) in Northern Iraq , making it the second U.S. oil company in a year to violate the Iraqi Oil Ministry’s claimed right to negotiate all energy deals from Baghdad.[i] In response, the Iraqi government disqualified the U.S. oil giant from signing any future deals with the Ministry, which prompted President Obama to denounce Chevron’s actions and reinforce America’s support for the Maliki government’s central authority in Baghdad.

These developments are coming at a precarious juncture. The last of the U.S. troops have exited an increasingly violent Iraq, Iraqi oil production is outpacing Iran’s for the first time since the end of the Iran-Iraq War, and the latest estimates are that the Kurdish region is home to 45 billion barrels of oil (more than twice the proven U.S. reserves). It is…

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