The US government, under President Trump, justifies the intervention as a security necessity rather than a resource grab. The primary official reasons include: narco-terrorism charges, national security and migration crisis.
OVL, along with global oil majors such as Royal Dutch Shell, ExxonMobil, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, British Petroleum, Total and China National Petroleum Corporation, is one of the 35 companies short-listed by the Iraqi government for the auction, which includes six oil-producing blocks with recoverable reserves of 40 billion barrels of oil, making it the largest such auction in the world.