Resources and Land Use
Natural resources: petroleum, natural gas, phosphates, sulfur
Land use:
arable land: 12%
permanent crops: 17%
permanent pastures: 13%
forests and woodland: 2%
other: 79% (1993 est.)
Irrigated land: 25,500 km2 or 9,800 sq mi (1993 est.)
While its proven oil reserves of 112 billion barrels (17.8×109 m3) ranks Iraq second in the world behind Saudi Arabia, the United States Department of Energy estimates that up to 90 percent of the country remains unexplored. Unexplored regions of Iraq could yield an additional 100 billion barrels (16×109 m3). Iraq's oil production costs are among the lowest in the world. However, only about 2,000 oil wells have been drilled in Iraq, compared to about 1 million wells in Texas alone.
Read more about this topic: Geography Of Iraq
Famous quotes containing the words resources and/or land:
“Everywhere we are told that our human resources are all to be used, that our civilization itself means the uses of everything it has—the inventions, the histories, every scrap of fact. But there is one kind of knowledge—infinitely precious, time- resistant more than monuments, here to be passed between the generations in any way it may be: never to be used. And that is poetry.”
—Muriel Rukeyser (1913–1980)
“I come to this land to ride my horse,
to try my own guitar, to copy out
their two separate names like sunflowers, to conjure
up my daily bread, to endure,
somehow to endure.”
—Anne Sexton (1928–1974)