The three-month saga that is the Gulf oil spill isn’t as bad now, but it’s not close to being over. Once BP stopped the flow of oil into the Gulf, some investors showed a bit of optimism by buying shares of the company on both the FTSE and NYSE. However, it’s not all roses from here.

On Tuesday, shares of BP closed at 387.45 on the FTSE and 35.56 on the NYSE—both down very slightly, but still well off their 52-week highs of 658.20 and 62.38 respectively.

While the desire to get in at the bottom might be propelling some investors to buy shares of BP, there’s still a lot of trouble on the horizon and the company’s stock on both exchanges has the potential for more downside. Read the full story

Over recent months the FDI in Iraq has jumped 241% to $156.7 Billion.

The foreign Investment in Iraq from around the world has been as follows:

2009

UAE: $37.6 bn

S.Korea: $24.7 bn

USA: $22 bn

UK: $10.5 bn

Lebanon: $10.1 bn

The biggest jump has been made by oil and gas.  Since 2003 it was real estate.  But since their 1st and 2nd oil licencing rounds have made a dramatic increase in the countries revenue and investment.

Energy investment into the country has been $73 billion so far this year.  You may remember i previously wrote about a company called Gulf Keystone (GKP) which has established itself in northern iraq back in 2007 and is taken advantage of Iraqs energy supply.  Last week it was annouced that it found oil, which is predicted to be between 12 and 15 billion barrells of Oil.  The shares have increased dramatically the past several months from lows of 0.03p earlier this year to a year high of £1.24.  Currently trading today at around £1.12

A recent interview on CNN with exectuive chairmen Todd Kozel was quoted in saying “In Kurdistan we have discovered about 25 million barrells of oil a day for a $30million dollar well, our 2 current projects combined in Algera are $70 million barrels to our interest”

They will need $120 million cash injection to help fund their ongoing project.  Todd Kozel has said “we are pretty much the most popular guys right now, we have all the attention we need right now, our institutional share holders are very supportive and thats where we will probably where we will go to raise that capital”

In 6 months time Todd reckons “initially Gulf Keystone will be an independent company but later down the line it will be more difficult to keep up with it financially HR, Technology, Engineering.  Weve got hold of something that is as big as Gulf Keystone right now but we are growing into it quickly”