What do you get from an Austrian, a Hungarian, a Kurd and two Emiratis? If you believe in the deal signed at the weekend between OMV, the Austrian energy group, MOL, its Hungarian neighbour, the Sharjah-based Crescent Petroleum and Crescent’s affiliate Dana Gas, you get the most important energy project to come out of Iraq since the removal of Saddam Hussein.

With luck and a following political wind, the $8 billion (£5 billion) investment by Pearl Petroleum in Kurdish Iraq could be the most significant since the discovery of oil at Kirkuk by the Iraqi Petroleum Company in the 1930s.

It could equally well be sunk by squabbling Baghdad politicians, dysfunctional ministers in Brussels and bellicose generals in Ankara.

That would be a pity, because the Pearl partners have a plan to extract gas from Khor Mor and Chemchemal, two giant fields in Kurdish Iraq, and pipe it across the Turkish border. From there, the gas would be carried by Nabucco, an as-yet-unbuilt European Union flagship pipeline, into Central Europe.

This may be the last chance for Nabucco, a project to bring Central Asian and Middle Eastern gas into Europe that has been on the drawing board for seven years.

Last week, Gazprom, arch-foe of Nabucco, was trumpeting a deal with Eni, the Italian energy group, that would double the size of South Stream, a rival pipeline project that would bring Russian gas across the Black Sea and into the Balkans, avoiding troublesome transit through Ukraine.

Until Sunday, Nabucco’s prospects seemed bleak. Backed by the former Bush Administration, as well as by Brussels, Nabucco has been a pipeline seeking a gasfield.

One by one, initially enticing gas reserves in Central Asia vanished as geopolitics and geography intervened. Turkmenistan grew tired of talk about trans-Caspian pipelines and looked to China for an alternative customer.

After years of debate and the sight of Russian tanks entering Georgia, Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan decided that discretion and Gazprom’s offer of a better gas price were better than valour and a speculative deal with Nabucco’s partners. Until Sunday, there was no other supplier bar Iran, still a bridge too far.

Iraq’s gas reserves are unknown, but sure to be big. The old regime never bothered to develop its gas. There are small gas recovery projects in the south and Shell is toying with a plan to win gas from the Kirkuk oilfield.

The Pearl partners reckon that their two fields alone could deliver three billion cubic feet a day into pipelines heading north, equal to a third of UK daily consumption. Swift to protest, the Oil Ministry in Baghdad denounced the deals, insisting that Kurdish Iraq could not export gas without central government consent.

There is jealousy in Baghdad over the upstart Kurdish regional government’s success in developing an independent oil industry. Baghdad initially blustered over exploration licences for tiny foreign explorers in Kurdistan, arguing that the Kurds were giving away too much oil profit to foreigners.

But a fortnight ago, Baghdad granted export licences for two Kurdish projects. Meanwhile, impatience with the failure of Iraq’s central government to bring oil output to even the levels before the 2003 invasion is turning to anger. A petition signed by 140 Iraqi MPs last week criticised the Oil Ministry.

The mood is also changing in Ankara, where Turkish distrust of Kurds is giving way to realpolitik and business deals. Turkey’s Government wants stability in Iraq, but also aspires to the role of Europe’s eastern energy hub.

In a future Iraq, without the iron glove of American security, the Kurdish region is an oil and gas prize, lonely, unprotected, bordered by a hostile Iran and a chaotic cauldron to the south and west. If not Turkey, who will protect Kurdistan?

The Kurdish government last month assigned its option over a quarter of Tawke, an oilfield found by DNO, of Norway. It should be no surprise that the beneficiary was Genel Enerji, the Turkish oil group.

carl.mortished@thetimes.co.uk

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