No mandarin in the Iraqi oil ministry is likely to dine alone over the next few years. Every international major has people on the ground, spending big sums on soft persuasion. The spadework should pay off once the country's long-delayed hydrocarbons law is ratified and access to the world's second-largest crude reserve is finally divvied up. But drawing up that law is proving divisive. The majors generally prefer long-term production sharing contracts for development, for example, under which they can book reserves on their balance sheets. The ministry, meanwhile, has signalled that more restrictive service contracts may be used for certain fields, which do not provide the risk-adjusted returns the majors are after.

Then there is the problem of Kurdistan. Before Christmas, DNO of Norway, the only overseas company actually producing oil in Iraq, doubled its recovery estimates from its Tawke field in the region. The fact that DNO's shares barely budged, in spite of a big increase in the company's implied net asset value, suggests deep reservations among investors over a denationalised Iraqi oil industry.