About Iraq Oil Report

Iraq Oil Report

Overview

Iraq Oil Report is an English-language online news and information service that reports on Iraq with a specialist focus on the country's energy sector, and alongside it the politics, security conditions and economy that shape that sector. Based in Baghdad, it was founded in 2009 by the American journalist Ben Lando, who remains its publisher and editor-at-large. The publication describes its mission in straightforward terms: it believes that reliable information, presented in the right way, can empower stakeholders to make smart decisions, and it sets out to deliver solid facts and unbiased insight synthesised into high-impact analysis for the companies, investors, governments, non-governmental organisations and other stakeholders who operate in or follow Iraq.

What distinguishes Iraq Oil Report from general news outlets covering Iraq is the depth of its on-the-ground apparatus. By its own account, its reporters and researchers have worked on the ground in every oil-producing province of Iraq for more than a decade, building a large network of sources and compiling substantial bodies of data. That combination of field reporting and accumulated records has made it, in the assessment of trade and academic commentary, the industry-leading specialist resource on Iraqi energy, and its reporting is routinely treated as a reference point by larger international news organisations working on Iraq stories.

Founding and the Founder's Path to Baghdad

The publication's origins lie in Washington, D.C., where Ben Lando worked for United Press International. Lando, who grew up in Kalamazoo, Michigan, and graduated from Western Michigan University in 2005, had spent two years as a columnist on the university's Western Herald newspaper and held a succession of roles at its student radio station, including reporter, anchor, news director and general manager, alongside freelance work for Michigan newspapers and broadcasters. He joined UPI in 2006 and was assigned to its energy desk, initially, by his own account, knowing little about the industry; a stint filling in on solar power stories led to his being given the Iraq oil brief.

Covering Iraq's oil industry from Washington, Lando developed an expertise that colleagues remarked upon; his UPI editor Krishnadev Calamur later recalled that the Iraq oil story was open when Lando took it up and that he quickly made it his own, building contacts so extensive that people assumed he had visited the country when in fact he had not. To supplement his wire reporting he started a blog, linking to Iraq-related news and reports with his own commentary and analysis, updated daily, which built a following of its own. When UPI laid him off in 2009, Lando decided to follow the story in person: he moved to Baghdad in July 2009 with the outline of a news service rooted in that blog, and Iraq Oil Report was the result.

Editorial Leadership and Team

Lando serves as founder, publisher and editor-at-large. His own reporting from a dozen countries on energy, political and security issues has been published in The Wall Street Journal, The Economist and Time Magazine, and he is also a contributing editor at Platts. He has briefed investor groups, diplomats and American and other political leaders on Iraq, and his work has been included in testimony to the United States Congress and cited in letters from members of Congress to the Secretary of State.

The editor-in-chief is Ben Van Heuvelen, who manages the editorial team and is responsible for all news content, coordinating coverage from Iraq and the region. Van Heuvelen previously served as the publication's managing editor. Before joining Iraq Oil Report he was a research fellow at the New America Foundation in Washington, D.C., and the chief researcher for the book Private Empire: ExxonMobil and American Power by the two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning author Steve Coll. His reporting and analysis also appear frequently in Bloomberg, The Washington Post and Foreign Policy, and he has briefed investors, diplomats and NGOs on Iraq's political and business environment.

Beyond its named editors, the operation relies on a network inside Iraq. Contemporary profiles of the business describe Lando relying on Iraqi stringers throughout the country, together with a translator who worked for the company from the United States, where he had arrived as a political refugee. That structure — international editors working with Iraqi reporters in the provinces where the oil industry actually operates — underpins the publication's claim to coverage from every oil-producing province.

The Subscription Business Model

Iraq Oil Report was built as a paid specialist news service rather than an advertising-led website. Lando summarised the model in a contemporary interview: invest in high-quality reporting and package that information at the level appropriate to the prospective paying customer. Advertising existed, but most revenue came from subscriptions. Prices reported at the time ranged from 1,795 dollars for a single user to 13,500 dollars for a corporation-wide subscription.

The client base reflected the readership the reporting was aimed at: most subscribers were companies involved in Iraq's oil sector, including firms working in exploration and production, drilling, investment, risk management and banking. Running such an operation from Baghdad carried the heavy overheads familiar to foreign news bureaus, with security and housing the biggest costs. Even so, the service broke even about a year after launch and was turning a profit by the following year, on Lando's account a successful work in progress whose detailed figures he declined to discuss.

Coverage and Editorial Method

Although oil is the organising subject, the reporting has never been confined to production figures and contract announcements. The publication covers Iraq's energy sector together with the political dynamics, security environment and economy around it, on the premise that in Iraq those subjects cannot be separated: decisions about oil contracts are political decisions, and the security situation determines whether fields, pipelines and export terminals can operate. Its output includes a daily brief for subscribers alongside in-depth reporting and analysis.

Lando's stated editorial strategy was to pursue the strongest reporting available on the story regardless of whether the parties involved wanted it public. That approach produced a record of publishing material that companies and governments had tried to keep unreleased, and of following stories through their ramifications over months and years rather than treating each development as an isolated event.

Notable Scoops

The publication's best-known early exclusive concerned ExxonMobil, then the world's largest oil company. Iraq Oil Report was the first to report the deal Exxon signed in October 2011 with the semi-autonomous Kurdistan Regional Government — an agreement that infuriated the central government in Baghdad, which maintained that it alone held the authority to grant oil contracts and export crude from the country. The story opened a prolonged dispute between Baghdad and Erbil over energy sovereignty in which the publication's continuing coverage tracked the entrance of the company, the political fallout and the updates to its work in Iraq, much of it, Lando noted, stories that the company or governments had not wanted released.

A second Exxon disclosure followed in February of the next year, when the service broke the news that the company had hired a former United States ambassador to Iraq, James F. Jeffrey, as a consultant on its Iraq business, while Jeffrey had only recently left the top diplomatic post in the country. Both stories illustrated the service's method: close attention to the intersection of corporate moves and state power in Iraq, reported ahead of larger competitors.

Audience and Influence

The publication's audience is professional rather than general: companies, investors, governments, NGOs and other stakeholders with operational interests or investments in Iraq, as its own description puts it. Its influence is visible in how often its work is used by others. Commentators have described it as the best English-language source for information about politics, economics and social protest in Iraq, and its editor has been interviewed as an authority on Iraqi energy by outlets including National Public Radio, explaining, for example, the implications of Baghdad–Kurdistan oil revenue arrangements during the war against the Islamic State. Its press page records a long run of appearances and citations across international media.

The Print Magazine

In 2019 the digital service added a physical product: Iraq Oil Report Magazine, a hard-copy magazine published six times a year. According to the publication, copies are delivered to thousands of investors and government officials at Iraq-focused conferences, as well as to hotels, ministries and government offices in Baghdad, Basra and Kurdistan, while the digital version is distributed to its followers across Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, a combined following it put at more than 70,000. Sample issues from 2018 to 2020 show the magazine's range: production records and export milestones, water injection at the giant Rumaila field, the giant Eridu discovery, refinery reconstruction, Kirkuk oil smuggling, electricity supply politics, and question-and-answer interviews with the heads of Basra Oil Company, the Iraqi Drilling Company, South Refineries Company and the International Energy Agency's Fatih Birol.

Place in Iraq's Media Landscape

Iraq Oil Report occupies a distinctive niche among outlets covering Iraq. It is neither a state organ, a party-affiliated channel nor a general-interest newspaper, but a privately built, subscription-funded specialist service created by a single reporter who identified an under-covered story of global significance. Oil has been central to Iraq's modern history — in Lando's words, most of the time in a very destructive role — and his founding idea was to follow the oil as a way of understanding the country. More than a decade of continuous reporting from inside Iraq has turned that idea into one of the most cited specialist publications on the country.

Continuing Operation

The service continues to publish from Baghdad in English, maintaining its about and team pages, its daily intelligence for subscribers and its public-facing analysis. Its longevity is itself part of its profile: foreign bureaus in Iraq contracted sharply after the post-2003 years, yet Iraq Oil Report sustained a reporting network across the country's oil provinces through the Islamic State war, the protest movements and the oil price shocks of the following years — the very events its field-based model was designed to cover.