This NY Times article describes the progress that Iraqi and American engineers and business executives have made in stabilizing and reviving Iraq’s cash-strapped and chronically underperforming oil and gas production. Iraqi officials and American advisers are attempting to revive this key Iraqi industry from one that Saddam Hussein’s government allowed to deteriorate from lack of investment and the looting of billions of dollars of oil sales while under United Nations sanctions after the 1991 Persian Gulf War. Iraq owns the third-largest oil reserves in the world (following Saudi Arabia and Canada), and its economy is almost solely reliant on revenue from oil exports. Accordingly, that revenue is a key component in financing Iraq’s economic revival.