Iraq has a rich history of oil usage, collected from seepages throughout the country and employed in the building of canoes, the construction of city walls (Babylon, for example), the paving of roads, and even the alleged bituminous waterproofing of Noah’s Ark. This chapter traces the growth of the oil industry in Iraq from the Mandate period until nationalisation in 1972, suggesting that oil and its byproducts constitute a significant dimension of Iraqi cultural heritage. Management of oil, therefore, is accompanied by the same politics as management of heritage, with implications for sovereignty, identity, and legitimacy. Competing local claims to the oil resources in northern Iraq shaped the growth of the industry in Mosul province; this provides a unique lens through which to trace the activities of the Turkish Petroleum Company (later, Iraq Petroleum Company (IPC)) and other syndicates in the country. Local claims involved the Turcomen Naftchizade family and the Jewish population of Zakho, both of whom had established refineries processing oil for local use. The 1930s and 1940s, a tumultuous period for Iraqi Jews, also saw the consolidation of a British monopoly on largescale oil production and the creation of the new state of Israel, both of which irrevocably complicated regional politics. Later publications of the IPC, including their Iraq Petroleum magazine (1951–1967) and glossy annual reports, highlight the ways in which Iraqi heritage lent legitimacy to corporate interests, in an auspicious moment following Iran’s nationalisation of oil. This research is based primarily on the BP Archives and the U.K. National Archives, complemented by newsletters of the University of Chicago’s Oriental Institute (OI) and newspaper articles. This chapter offers insights on the ways in which sovereignty is manifested in the governance of oil and how oil has been leveraged as heritage for political and corporate legitimacy.