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IRBIL, Iraq The Chaldean Catholic patriarch is supporting a more than 80-mile peace march during Holy Week to urge an end to violence in his homeland and throughout the Middle East.

The Chaldean Catholic Church has dedicated 2017 as the Year of Peace. For the patriarch, Holy Week culminating in the Easter celebration offers a fresh hope to breathe new life into prayer and reflection, reconciliation and dialogue.

Peace must be achieved by us (religious leaders) as well as politicians, through courageous initiatives and responsible decisions, said Patriarch Louis Sako of Baghdad.

He has repeatedly called on Iraqis to engage in serious dialogue, openness and honesty to realize national reconciliation and unity among the countrys vast mosaic of religious and ethnic peoples, battered by years of sectarian violence.

Some 100 people, Iraqis and foreigners, are expected to participate in the march, which will begin on Palm Sunday (April 9) with a Mass in Irbil, the patriarch told Catholic News Service by phone.

They will walk from Irbil to Alqosh in the Ninevah Plain, needing one week or more because the journey is very long, some (140 kilometers) 87 miles, he said. I will join them in a village near Alqosh on Holy Thursday, April 13.

The march presents a great occasion for unity, and a common front against the violence and bloodshed that have scarred Iraq and the region, he said.

Another group from Lyon, France, will help make the Way of the Cross using as the stations villages from Telaskov to Bakova, a walk of two to three hours, Sako told CNS.

This peace initiative is meant to demonstrate the bond among Iraqi communities and churches around the world during the years of suffering and persecution. These once-flourishing Christian towns have formed the bedrock of centuries of Christian history and were recently liberated from the brutal control of the so-called Islamic State militants.

Telaskov translates as Bishops Hill and, before the Islamic State takeover, was a thriving, modern town of 11,000. But when ISIS attacked in 2014, Christians fled. Although it is currently a ghost town, there are hopes that it will revive when mines and booby traps left by the militants are removed and its infrastructure rebuilt.

Last September, representatives of the Chaldean Catholic Archdiocese of Irbil told the U.S. Congress that they had received no U.N. or U.S. government-administered humanitarian aid for 70,000 Christian or Yezidi survivors of what has been now designated as a genocide against them and other Iraqi minorities, carried out by the Islamic State since 2014.

Before the U.S.-led 2003 war that toppled Saddam Hussein, Iraqs Christian population numbered an estimated 1.4 million. After being killed or driven out, they number only 250,000 people. Despite these difficulties, Iraqs Christian community remains the Middle Easts fourth-largest indigenous Christian community.

At the moment, we are going through the tunnel, and we need to work hard and pray without ceasing for peace in our country and the region and for the safe return of the forcibly displaced people to their homes and properties, Sako said in a recent Lenten address.

He urged the faithful to rely on wisdom and patience and to stay united together on the land where we were born (and have) lived for 1,400 years together with Muslims, sharing one civilization.

Ahead of Easter, Sako said he hopes for a real resurrection, a quick return of displaced to their homes, and a restoration of peace at our churches, country and the whole world.

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Chaldean patriarch supports Holy Week peace march in Iraq - Crux: Covering all things Catholic

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U.S.-Led Coalition Responsible for 229 Civilian Deaths Since 2014 in Iraq, Syria Strikes - KTLA

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Why Trump, Against His Instincts, Spared Iraq From the Travel Ban ... Wall Street Journal (subscription) National-security officials, after getting an earful from Iraq on why it did not belong on a list of restricted countries, quietly made their case to the presidentwho ... and more »

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Why Trump, Against His Instincts, Spared Iraq From the Travel Ban ... - Wall Street Journal (subscription)

Iraq's compliance stands now at 98 percent, the nation's oil minister Jabar al-Luaibi told reporters, after addressing a conference in the Iraqi capital, also attended by Barkindo.

Compliance with the deal agreed by OPEC and non-OPEC producers at the end of last year to cut supply is "encouraging," Barkindo told the forum.

General compliance with supply cuts by the oil producers was 86 percent in January and 94 percent in February, he added.

The market is already balancing, Barkindo said, adding stocks of crude were coming down.

Luaibi said he was satisfied with the existing deal, but declined to say whether Iraq would support an extension, leaving it to an OPEC ministerial meeting planned in May.

The current deal, he said, "contains many positive elements and achieved a lot of targets; work is ongoing to reach the reduction of 1.8" million barrels per day agreed by OPEC and 11 other nations including Russia for their combined production in the first half of 2017.

The accord has lifted crude to about $50 a barrel. But the price gain has also encouraged U.S. shale oil producers, which are not part of the pact, to boost output.

While Iraq is committed to achieving 100 percent of its target reduction, it will proceed with projects to boost oil production capacity to 5 million barrels per day before the end of the year, Luaibi said.

OPEC's second-largest producer, after Saudi Arabia, Iraq will proceed in parallel with exploration plans to increase its reserves by 15 billion barrels in 2018, to reach 178 billion barrels, he said.

Among the plans to increase output capacity from existing fields is a sea water injection plan which is in process of being tendered, he added.

Iraq's oil production has averaged 4.464 million barrels per day so far in March, a reduction of more than 300,000 bpd on levels before OPEC cuts were implemented from Jan. 1, state-oil marketer SOMO said on Thursday.

Average crude exports were 3.756 million bpd in March, versus a record of more than 4 million bpd in November, according to SOMO.

Most of Iraq's crude is exported from southern ports, the region where it is produced. Exports from the south averaged 3.2 million bpd in March, Luaibi said.

Barkindo described as "very constructive" meetings he had on Saturday with Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi and other Iraqi leaders in Baghdad.

Iraq's natural gas output will triple to 1,700 million cubic feet per day by 2018, as it implements projects to reduce flaring, Luaibi told the conference.

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Iraq has pledged to fully comply with oil cut deal, OPEC chief says - Daily Republic

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April 2, 2017, 1:00 PM EDT

A territorial dispute in northern Iraq threatens to disrupt oil output at a field containing as much crude as Norway, even asU.S.-backed forces prepare what could be a decisive blow against Islamic State militants in the nearby city of Mosul. Kirkuk, where Iraq first discovered oil in 1927, can produce more than 1 million barrels a day but is pumping at less than half its capacity while competing ethnic and political groups scramble to control its 9 billion barrels of reserves.

Lying near a disputed city of the same name, the Kirkuk field is a tinderbox for potential conflict between the central government and Iraqs semi-autonomous Kurds, both of whom have for decades claimed it as their own. More recently, it also became became a flashpoint for rival Kurdish political parties and their heavily armed supporters. As Islamic State becomes less of a pressing threat, a lot of these tensions that had been subsumed into the common fight are inevitably going to come back to the surface, says Richard Mallinson, an analyst at consultant Energy Aspects Ltd.

Iraqs central government and theKurdistan Regional Government both pump oil from different wells at the field, which straddles their respective areas of control.Kurdish forces took control of territory around Kirkuk in June 2014 after the Iraqi Army fled from Islamic State militants, but the federal government in Baghdad doesnt recognize Kurdish control of the area. The Patriotic Union of Kurdistan party, which leads Kirkuks local government and maintains the citys security, is a rival to the Kurdistan Democratic Party that dominates the KRG and controls most of its oil revenues.

Kirkuk and nearby fields are producing about half a million barrels of oil daily, according to data supplied by the Oil Ministry and the KRG in September 2016. Most of the crude is exported through a Kurdish-controlled pipeline to the Turkish port of Ceyhan. The KRG produces about 350,000 barrels a day, and the state-run North Oil Co. approximately 150,000. The two sides reached a deal in August 2016 allowing North Oil to export through the Kurdish pipeline. In return, the KRG takes a cut of the revenue and gets to export its own share of crude from Kirkuk. Iraq, the second-biggest OPEC member, pumped a total of 4.44 million barrels a day in February, data compiled by Bloomberg show. Oil prices fell more than 2 percent after the agreement as it was expected to increase exports by about 150,000 barrels.

The export deal doesnt address the competing claims to Kirkuks oil, or the larger dispute over the KRGs right to produce and export oil independently of the central government. The deal also left out Kirkuks PUK-led provincial government, stoking tensions between the two main Kurdish parties. On March 2, soldiers loyal to the PUK stormed North Oils main pumping facility at Kirkuk and briefly halted exports of more than 100,000 barrels a day. They threatened to cut off those exports permanently unless Iraqs Oil Ministry agreed to share revenue from crude pumped there and to develop local energy projects.

The KDP and PUK are uneasy coalition partners in the KRG, having fought a civil war with each other in the 1990s. They mobilized independently against Islamic State in 2014, a year when oil prices plunged by half, straining the KRGs budget. Tensions between them are at their highest level since the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, says Shwan Zulal, managing director of Carduchi Consulting: Since the money ran out, theres been a bit of a fight for resources.

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Prime Minister Haider Al-Abadi reached an agreement with the PUK in emergency talks on March 7, prompting the party to lift its immediate threat of shutting in exports. PUK officials said the prime minister had promised to implement an accord reached in January under which the Oil Ministry would give Kirkuk a share of oil revenues, develop local refineries and power plants, and also supply them with oil.

A collapse of this accord couldcut off North Oils access to the KRGs export pipeline and immediately remove at least 100,000 barrels a day from world markets. Perhaps more importantly, it could push the central government back into open dispute with the KRG, throwing up legal hurdles for anyone wanting to produce or transport crude from the Kurdish region itself. If the government doesnt abide by its commitments to Kirkuk, people across all communities and parties could rise up again, says Ahmed Al-Askari, head of the Kirkuk assemblys energy committee and a PUK member.

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A Squabble at Iraq's Oldest Oil Field Could Rock Global Supplies - Bloomberg