Less than a year after the departure of U.S. troops from Iraq, Baghdad is losing a primary lever over independent-minded Kurdistan -- its grip on the northern region's revenue-earning oil industry. Kurdistan's secret weapon? Foreign oil companies are exasperated with Baghdad's stinginess and allured by the Kurds' more liberal terms for oil contracts.

These companies are becoming an unintentional fifth column in Kurdistan's march toward economic autonomy. On July 31, France's Total became the third big oil company to break with Baghdad by signing an unsanctioned oil deal with Kurdistan. Baghdad, intent on full mastery over the nation's massive petroleum revenue, forbids oil companies from dealing directly with Kurdistan and instead requires them to bid for projects through the Ministry of Oil and to ship their oil through Baghdad-controlled pipelines. However, ExxonMobil, Chevron, and Total have now flouted Baghdad's wishes, putting their oil deals in Iraq's south at risk in the process. Their calculus is that despite the relative inferiority of Kurdistan's oil reserves, the potential upside there outweighs the downside threat of possibly losing access to Iraq proper, according to oil company executives with whom I have spoken.

The pressure will now be on Baghdad to somehow stem what is looking like an oil-company rebellion. It's yet another challenge for the Iraqi government, which is already struggling with rising violence and dropping oil revenue because of sagging global prices.

History has seen numerous states taken over by companies -- one thinks, for instance, of the United Fruit Company's activities in Latin America. But should this trend continue in Kurdistan, it would mark, as far as I recall, the first time that oil companies have been principal actors in a nation becoming effectively autonomous. Of course, it will be up to the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) to ensure that it is not swallowed up by the companies, which was the fate of some Central and South American countries in the 19th and early 20th centuries.

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Has ExxonMobil -- the annoyingly prissy schoolboy who always obeys the teacher -- risked weakening one of its distinguishing pillars in order to break into a single oil patch? And if so, could that shake up the global oil market along with geopolitics?

We are referring to the news, indiscreetly disclosed by a Kurdistan official last week, that the northern Iraqi region has signed an oil exploration agreement with Exxon. The reason this is a problem is that Kurdistan has been in a long-standing turf war with the folks in Baghdad over how to divide the spoils from its hydrocarbon riches. Until it's settled, Baghdad has forbidden foreign oil companies with which it does business -- which include Exxon, Shell, Italy's Eni, France's Total, the China National Oil Corp., Russia's Lukoil and virtually every substantial name in the industry -- to sign any deals with the Kurds without its okay. In September, for example, the U.S. company Hess was barred from a new round of Iraqi leases explicitly because of deals it executed with the Kurds three months earlier.

The stakes are high not just for Exxon, but for Iraq, the U.S., and the international community: The commercial tensions arise a little over a month before the Dec. 31 deadline for U.S. troops to be out of Iraq, and a predictable rise of other, security-based challenges to Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki. In an analysis, Reuters' Patrick Markey writes that a hard line against Exxon by al-Maliki could backfire by encouraging other companies to pull up stakes in Iraq proper and take up drilling in Kurdistan, hence jeopardizing his aim of building up oil exports from the south; but if he isn't tough enough, he could lose authority with other restive Iraqi regions.

The U.S., too, has a stake in stability on the ground once it leaves, and in Iraq's oil exports rising from the 2.9 million barrels a day it currently ships. The U.S. also is eager for a north-south agreement since it could result in Kurdistan's natural gas flowing into Europe through the proposed Nabucco pipeline, with which the U.S. hopes to curb Russian market dominance of the continent. Already, Genel, an oil company linked to former BP CEO Tony Hayward, is planning a 400,000-barrel-a-day oil export pipeline from Kurdistan, to be finished in the second half of 2013. In a statement, State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said that the Obama administration had advised Exxon that "they run significant political and legal risks if they sign contracts" with Kurdistan.

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Annals of the court of public opinion:

Shale gas has a bad week ... On the plane to California, I happen to sit next to a shale-gas driller. He waxed enthusiastic about the prospects of the Utica Shale, a relatively fresh discovery underlying eight U.S. states. Until now, the Marcellus has been the most promising shale gas formation in production, but the Utica may rival it in size and volume, the driller said. But what about the PR shellacking that shale gas has been enduring? I asked. That is quieting down, the driller replied, as folks digest the economic value of the shale. Perhaps in the long run he will be right. As for now, not so much. This week may have been the industry's worst since Josh Fox released Gasland.

First came some audiotapes recorded during an industry gathering in Houston by an environmentalist blogger named Sharon Wilson, otherwise known as "Texas Sharon." In the tapes, Wilson runs her recorder as communications executives from two of the world's biggest industry players use the unforgiving language of war to advise other hands how to deflect critics (CNBC's Eamon Javers posts the recordings here.). A Range Resources official speaks of hiring combat veterans for expertise in "psy-ops," and an Anakarko Petroleum executive recommends that fellow industry hands read the U.S. Army/Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual. "Having that understanding of psy ops in the Army and in the Middle East has applied very helpfully here for us in Pennsylvania," Range's Matt Pitzarella tells his audience. The cracked door into company boardrooms reinforced the impression of an industry that perceives itself to be under siege, not one necessarily focused on simply doing its best.

Go to the jump for more on shale gas and the rest of the Wrap

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