Kurdish Oil Riches Lure Wildcatters Unswayed by Deaths in Iraq

A few miles outside the village of Tawke in northeastern Iraq, black smoke billows over the green hills as a 100-foot fire rages unchecked.

Najman Yousef, a former Kurdish guerrilla, inspects the scene. This blaze, unlike the attacks roiling the rest of Iraq, is a positive sign: It’s burning the excess oil gushing from one of the first wells drilled since the fall of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein four years ago.