Tankers filled with oil are aimlessly circling the seas unable to dock thanks to a vicious legal dispute between Kurds in northern Iraq and the Iraqi government. That the Iraqis should be spending millions on lawyers in their pursuit of Kurdish oil even as their country is ravaged by Islamic State jihadis is somewhat disconcerting but what of the prospectors who found the oil in the first place?
Enter Nat Rothschild, scion of the banking dynasty, investor in struggling mining company Bumi, and controversial dinner-party companion of Peter Mandelson. Back in 2011 he and Tony Hayward (yes, he of the BP oil spill) founded Genel Energy to take advantage of newfound stability in the Kurdish region of Iraq and prospect for oil. They found it but now — thanks to multiplying legal embargoes and the ongoing civil war — they can’t sell it. Instead it sits listlessly offshore like a billionaire on a Corfu yacht.
Luckily, Rothschild is rumoured to have a £500 million inheritance to fall back on, so there’s no need to panic.
