Ben Lando heads the website Iraq Oil Report. He spoke to VOA via Skype.

"It's a have a fundamental dispute as to what the future of the state looks like, and the oil is where you can see it most starkly playing out."

Iraq's economy is recovering slowly from war and sanctions. At one point, gross domestic product per person fell to just $800, but is now about $3000. But that is lower than Iraqi incomes in the 1970s. Unemployment is at least 18 percent, but the oil industry's growing efficiency means it will provide fewer jobs than it did in the past.

Mohsin Khan is with the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington.

“Refineries, people say that you can run refineries that would take 1,000 people in the 1970s, now with 10 [people]. Because of computerization and so on, you don’t need people.”

But Iraqis need jobs. Nearly a quarter of the nation's 32 million citizens live in poverty.