In an oil-drenched region, all these countries are united by the relative scarcity of their energy reserves.
In addition, the battle for control of Kirkuk, a city in an oil-rich region, must still be resolved.
Shell's local subsidiary is the top foreign oil producer in the Niger Delta, an oil-rich region of mangroves and swamps about the size of Portugal.
South Sudan, for years the largest oil producer in the region and locked in an oil dispute with Sudan, now wants to send crude out through Kenya on a pipeline to a proposed new port in Lamu (see map).
An oil company doing business in the region, Genel Energy, began shipping Kurdish oil by truck to Turkey in January.
Observers say the US finds it hard to criticise a country which is seen as an ally in a volatile, oil-rich region.
Not to be confused with either the Strategic Petroleum Reserve or the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR), the desolate 23 million acre NPRA region was first established as an oil reserve for the U.S. Navy in 1923.
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Equatorial Guinea, which has been issuing lots of prospecting licenses and is seeing its speck of an economy grow at breakneck speed on the back of an oil-exploration boom, could emerge as the region's third-largest producer, with 740, 000 barrels a day by then.
This threat to the Libyan oil fields and to peace in the region would have an immediate impact in commodity markets.
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Now General Abubakar has a golden chance to exploit the goodwill that the West is ready to give to a country that it sees, not just as a big oil-producer, but as an international power in an unstable region.
Both countries shared an interest in regionals stability, which would allow uninterrupted oil flows from the region.
Georgia is an important link in the energy corridor that connects the oil-rich Caspian region with the outside world.
Concho's core operating areas are located in the Permian Basin region of Southeast New Mexico and West Texas, an onshore oil and natural gas basin in the United States.
The Financial Times says Algeria has long feared that an upsurge in militant activity could threaten its valuable southern region - rich in oil and gas.
When American oil firms first began to take an interest in the rich energy resources of the region in the early and mid-1990s and to invest tens of millions of dollars, especially in Kazakhstan, Russia did not have the financial means to compete.
An international team of researchers and scientists has been studying the impacts of the oil spill on the region's people and environment.
And while coalition forces remain in the region, oil prices are increasing, which is the last thing politicians want during an economic crisis.
This week's violence in the north comes on top of unceasing violence in the southern Niger Delta region, where an insurgency by militants demanding a bigger share of the country's oil wealth continues to disrupt oil exports.
The Gulf of Mexico has become an important deepwater exploration and production region and it now contributes to 27% of the total crude oil production in the U.S. BP owns the largest acreages in the Gulf and plans to resume drilling in the region to prop up its declining crude production.
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Unlike the southern rebels, who won a promise of an eventual referendum on secession, those in Darfur want only a fairer share for their region of the oil revenues that the central government reserves to itself.
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