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Oil supplies in Iraq and Russia surged to the highest level in decades, signaling no respite in early 2015 from the glut that has pushed crude prices to their lowest in five years.

Russian oil production rose 0.3 percent in December to a post-Soviet record of 10.667 million barrels a day, according to preliminary data e-mailed yesterday by CDU-TEK, part of the Energy Ministry. Iraq exported 2.94 million barrels a day in December, the most since the 1980s, said Oil Ministry spokesman Asim Jihad. The countries provided 15 percent of the worlds oil in November, according to the International Energy Agency.

Oil slumped 48 percent in London in 2014, the steepest decline since the 2008 financial crisis, as the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries refused to pare output in response to the highest U.S. oil production in three decades. Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak, who met with some OPEC members in November, said the nation will maintain output this year and expects prices to stabilize.

With the latest news from Russia and Iraq, the focus on rising supply remains a key negative driver for oil, Ole Sloth Hansen, an analyst at Saxo Bank A/S in Copenhagen, said yesterday by e-mail. Brent crude futures, at about $56 a barrel yesterday, may slip below $50 this year, he said.

Russian output is increasing even after the U.S. and the European Union imposed sanctions last year in response to the countrys annexation of Crimea and what they say was support for separatists in eastern Ukraine. Measures included targeting the energy sector by banning exports to Russia of some equipment and technology. The countrys government gets about half of its revenue from oil and gas taxes.

Iraq, OPECs second-biggest producer, reached a deal with its semi-autonomous Kurdish region last month over the Kurds oil exports through Turkey, after years of disagreement on the territorys right to independently develop its energy resources.

The agreement looks to have had a positive effect on exports to the north, analysts at consultants JBC Energy GmbH in Vienna said in a report yesterday.

The agreement allows the shipment of as much as 550,000 barrels a day of oil from northern Iraq to the port of Ceyhan on the Mediterranean, along a pipeline to the Turkish border operated by the Kurdistan Regional Government. This includes 300,000 barrels a day from the Kirkuk oilfields in northern Iraq, under the control of Kurdish forces since they moved to repel an offensive by militants from the Islamic State in June.

Iraq exported 5.579 million barrels of Kirkuk oil in December, equivalent to about 180,000 barrels a day, Oil Ministry spokesman Jihad said by text message yesterday. Thats more than a six-fold increase from 836,000 barrels in November, according to the Oil Ministry.

The Russian production figure is for crude and condensates, an ultralight oil that yields a greater proportion of high-value fuels. Production averaged 10.58 million barrels a day for 2014, also a post-Soviet record. Preliminary data, which didnt reflect shipments by Gazprom Neft and may be revised, showed a decline in exports.

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Russia, Iraq Supply Most Oil in Decades as 2015 Begins With Glut

In Iraqs western Anbar province, more than 300 U.S. troops are posted at a base in the thick of a pitched battle between Iraqi forces, backed by tribal fighters, and well-armed Islamic State militants.

The militants, positioned at a nearby town, have repeatedly hit the base with artillery and rocket fire in recent weeks. Since the middle of December, the U.S.-led military coalition has launched 13 airstrikes around the facility.

U.S. troops have suffered no casualties in the attacks. But the violence has underlined the risks to American personnel as they fan out across Iraq as part of the expanding U.S. mission against the Islamic State, even as President Obama has pledged that U.S. operations will not involve American combat troops fighting on foreign soil.

In a sign of the risks, military officials said American soldiers have been transported to the Ayn al-Asad base under the cover of night by helicopter partly to maintain a low profile for the renewed U.S. operation in Iraq but also to protect U.S. personnel amid fierce fighting west of the capital, Baghdad.

Under Obamas plan to aid the Iraqi government, the number of U.S. troops in Iraq is expected to grow to about 3,000 from just under 2,000 now. Not only have they been deployed in Baghdad and the northern city of Irbil, but in recent weeks they also have been sent to Anbar and to training sites flanking the capital.

Iraqi government forces took back an area in the Sunni heartland of Anbar province after launching a large-scale attack on Islamic State militants. (Reuters)

Overall, they are a tiny force compared with the more than 160,000 U.S. troops who were stationed in Iraq at the height of the 2003-2011 war. But American military officials recognize that Iraq remains a dangerous neighborhood in places, as a spokesman for the U.S. Central Command put it.

We are aware of those risks, and we are taking appropriate measures to mitigate them, said the spokesman, Col. Patrick Ryder.

While U.S. commanders have suggested that U.S. ground activities might expand, troops are limited to advising local commanders and retraining elements of Iraqs army. The Americans are confined to military headquarters or training bases at four sites.

Those sites include al-Asad in Anbar, a largely Sunni province that has been particularly volatile and provided a foothold for Islamic State forces in Iraq. Militants now control much of the province, including the city of Fallujah and the town of Hit.

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U.S. advisers in Iraq stay out of combat but see fighting edging closer

Published January 02, 2015

BAGHDAD Iraq's government says gunmen have killed three Sunni clerics near the mostly Shiite southern city of Basra.

An Interior Ministry statement said assailants ambushed a car Thursday night carrying the clerics in the mostly Sunni district of Bab al-Zubeir near Basra, shooting dead the three and seriously wounding a fourth cleric traveling with them.

There was no claim of responsibility for the ambush and no reports of retaliatory attacks by Sunnis.

Iraq's sectarian violence peaked in 2006-07, when thousands of Shiites and Sunnis perished in attacks. The violence later eased but has partially resumed after Sunni militants of the Islamic State group swept across much of northern and western Iraq last year.

Shiites make up a majority of Iraq's estimated 30 million people.

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Officials say gunmen kill 3 Sunni clerics in Iraq's mainly Shiite city of Basra

Violence in Iraq resulted in more than 35,000 civilian casualties in the past year, making 2014 the bloodiest year in Iraq since the 2006-2007 sectarian tensions after the US-led invasion.

While the United Nationsfigures report12,282 civilian deaths in Iraq, The Iraq Body Count, a non-profit that tracks violence in Iraq, reportedcivilian deathsroughly doubled from 2013 to 2014.

Therise of the Islamic State

In February,a little-known fringe group of al-Qaeda overtook Fallujah, a key Iraqi city in the Anbar province. Months after, the Islamic State, then known as ISIS, captured Mosul, the second-largest city in Iraq. That event flared tensions around the country and led to the deadliest month last year where more than 3,200 civilians died or were injured.

The Islamic State has been listed as the group that has killed the most people in the past year, beating out Boko Haram, the Taliban, and Al-Shabab, according to a report conducted by the BBC World Service and King's College London. The report also stated that Iraq was the worst-affected country hit by jihadist attacks.

The militant group doesn't alone hold the blame for the steep death toll. According to my collegue Ishaan Tharoor:

The Islamic State made significant inroads into Iraq partially because of the incompetence and myopia of the politiciansin Baghdad. Former Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, who was more or lesshand-picked by the United States,presided over adeeply sectarian governmentwhich favored the country's Shiites at the expense of the minority Sunnis.

Massacres

The Islamic State conducted massacres in both Iraq and Syria throughout the year. One of the most notorious was in Mosul, where 670 prisoners were killed after they were orderedto line up, kneel down, and then were met with open fire.

Another mass killing that followed was to the south of Mosul in Camp Speicher, where 650-770 menwere slain.The militant group posted graphic images of the killings on social media.

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WorldViews: The last time this many Iraqi civilians died was in 2007

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