Iraq

A delegation from the International Energy Agency spent two days in Baghdad speaking with high-ranking officials in preparation for an end-of-year report on the country's oil sector. By some estimates, Iraq could hold some of the largest oil reserves in the world and an international auction for oil and natural gas blocks is planned for May. Without a hydrocarbon law, and considering the fractured political system, the IEA's report may be more about political obstacles than oil potential, however.

“To waste, to destroy our natural resources, to skin and exhaust the land instead of using it so as to increase its usefulness, will result in undermining in the days of our children the very prosperity which we ought by right to hand down to them amplified and developed.”

Iraq’s Prime Minister, Nuri al-Maliki, has announced approval for an agricultural project that will develop biofuel from rotting dates.

Last year, former CIA Director James Woolsey told me that he became a fan of electric vehicles years ago when running a war game for Congresswoman Jane Harman.