Iraq’s energy sector is not just one sector among many: It is the economy. It represents the backbone of the Iraqi state, the engine of public finance, and a barometer of both the country’s promise and its vulnerability. Oil revenues account for the overwhelming share of state income and more than half of GDP. Therefore, it is the primary lens through which Iraq’s relationship with the outside world is understood. It is against this backdrop that the Dhia Jafar Center for Energy and Natural Resources at the American University of Iraq, Sulaimani (AUIS) launches Iraq Energy Outlook. This publication is dedicated to a simple but urgent proposition: discussion about this vital sector needs to be grounded in fact. Iraq needs better energy analysis, better data, better forecasting, and a more disciplined national conversation about what underwrites its public finances and shapes the daily life of every Iraqi household. For too long, Iraq’s energy debate has been dominated by politics, crisis, slogans, and short-term bargaining. The country has no shortage of opinions about oil, gas, electricity, exports, tariffs, the Erbil-Baghdad dispute, OPEC, and relations with the United States and the broader Middle East. What it lacks is a dedicated, empirically grounded, and analytically rigorous platform that connects data to policy choices and policy choices to consequences. That is the gap Iraq Energy Outlook seeks to fill.

Iraq needs an energy model — not in the narrow technical sense alone — but as a national analytical framework. We need data-driven tools that help forecast demand and supply, track changes in public and business behavior, identify industry priorities, and test the consequences of policy choices before they become crises. We need to understand not only how many barrels Iraq can produce, but what happens when export routes close, electricity demand rises, tariffs change, gas supplies are disrupted, electric vehicles enter the market, local manufacturing expands, or climate pressures reshape access to water, power, and agriculture. A model is not a crystal ball. But it is far better than driving the country’s most important sector by looking in the rearview mirror. The need for such analysis is becoming more urgent by the day. Iraq’s vulnerabilities are not theoretical.

They are visible in its lack of export diversification, weak investment climate, unstable electricity system, policy opacity, unresolved energy disputes between the federal government and the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), dependence on oil revenues, exposure to regional wars, and the accelerating pressures of climate change and energy transition. Energy systems are changing beyond Iraq’s borders. Producers are preparing for different demand scenarios. Markets are becoming more competitive. Technology is shifting consumption patterns. Put simply, Iraq remains dangerously dependent on a fragile set of assumptions: that oil will keep flowing, prices will stay favorable, export routes will remain open, and public revenues will keep pace with public expectations.

This is not only an energy vulnerability; it is a fiscal and geopolitical one. Iraq depends on a commodity whose price it does not control and on financial channels whose reliability cannot be taken for granted. Every price shock, export disruption, or constraint on dollar access can quickly become a budget crisis without sufficient savings, stabilization mechanisms, diversified exports, and access to non-oil revenue. Recent events have made this vulnerability painfully clear. Disruptions around the Strait of Hormuz exposed Iraq’s heavy reliance on southern exports and the absence of meaningful alternatives, including a functioning south-north strategic pipeline. Iraq could not easily redirect crude, partly because of unresolved Erbil-Baghdad disputes, nor could it rely on adequate storage, alternative corridors, or fiscal buffers. Even exported oil faced complications tied to dollar liquidity and strained relations with Washington. For a state whose public coffers are pegged to petroleum exports and prices — neither of which it fully controls — this is more than inconvenient. It is a structural danger.

This is the resource curse in its most visible form. The state earns through petroleum, spends through petroleum, hires through petroleum, subsidizes through petroleum, and politically survives through petroleum. Yet citizens continue to experience unreliable electricity and fuel, weak services, limited job creation, and recurring fiscal anxiety. Iraq’s budget is not simply dependent on oil; it is exposed to every swing in prices, every disruption in exports, and every constraint on access to revenue. The country has not saved enough in good years, built a serious counter-cyclical fiscal system, diversified its revenue base, or created infrastructure equal to the importance of the resource it depends on. Revenue without resilience is not security. It is fragility dressed up as wealth.

This first issue of Iraq Energy Outlook is therefore not simply a publication about energy developments. It is an invitation to think differently. We begin with electricity because that is where citizens encounter the state every day.

The analysis of the Kurdistan Region’s Runaki program in “Electricity Reform Without Resilience” recognizes genuine progress in billing discipline, demand rationalization, and reduced generator dependence. But it also shows that pricing reform and smart meters are not enough. When drone attacks disrupt the gas supply from Khor Mor, electricity reform becomes a question of energy security. Reliability, public acceptance, fuel diversification, and contingency planning are not secondary matters. They are the conditions under which reform has to survive. We then turn to oil exports and public finance. “A Single Strike, a Total Shutdown” shows how quickly Iraq’s fiscal position can deteriorate when export flows are interrupted. The lesson is direct: export concentration is not merely a logistical problem, but a national vulnerability. If one corridor carries the overwhelming majority of the country’s crude, then one shock can become a budget crisis, a salary crisis, and a governance crisis. The issue closes with “Energy Developments in Context,” which tracks key developments across Iraq’s energy landscape, including the Strait of Hormuz crisis, Chevron’s potential entry into Iraq’s upstream sector, disruptions to domestic fuel markets, and the reopening of a Syrian export route to relieve bottlenecks. Each of these developments matters on its own. Together, they point to a larger reality: Iraq’s energy sector is being shaped by geopolitics, infrastructure limits, investment signals, domestic consumption, and institutional capacity all at once.

This is why the Dhia Jafar Energy Center will take a holistic view of energy, which serves as the operating system of the Iraqi economy. We will study oil and gas, but we will not be limited by them. We will examine electricity, public finance, industrial policy, local manufacturing, transportation, electric vehicles, household consumption, business behavior, climate pressures, and the energy-water-environment nexus. Our ambition is to add a level of empiricism to a debate that is too often overly political. We will work with global centers of excellence to develop data collection methodologies, analytical models, and forecasting tools suited to Iraq’s realities. We will build databases, publish policy analyses, convene serious conversations, and help create a shared vocabulary for reform. We will ask hard questions, but our purpose is constructive: to support better decision-making and a more resilient Iraq and Kurdistan Region. Research, however, is only part of the mission.

The Dhia Jafar Energy Center is anchored at a university, and that matters. It means we are not only producing analysis for today’s decision-makers; we are helping train the people who will power tomorrow’s energy landscape. We will build research capacity, create opportunities for students and young professionals, support fellows and visiting scholars, and develop a pipeline of talent for government, industry, civil society, and academia. Iraq does not only need better policy papers. It needs people who can read data, question assumptions, understand markets, design institutions, and serve the public interest with competence and integrity. That is the difference that basing such a center at a university can make. We are a platform for research, but also for formation.

We are a place for analysis, but also for dialogue. We are a convener, but also a training ground. The launch of Iraq Energy Outlook is a modest beginning with an ambitious purpose. We aim to make complex energy issues clearer, to connect evidence with policy, and to contribute to a more serious national conversation about Iraq’s future. Progress is possible. Iraq and the Kurdistan Region have resources, talent, geography, and a young population eager for opportunity. But potential is not policy. Resources are not resilience. Revenue is not development. Iraq’s energy future will not be secured by hope alone.

To be the blessing it should be, it will require data, discipline, investment, institutional clarity, infrastructure, and public trust. Iraq Energy Outlook is offered in that spirit.