Reuters reported that the Iraqi Oil Ministry said the country will hold a major oil and gas conference in October to allow foreign oil firms to get a better understanding of the country’s energy potential.
The Oct 17-19 energy conference and exhibition will be the first event of its type in Iraq since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003. More than 50 international oil companies would take part, Oil Ministry spokesman Asim Jihad told a news conference.
“It will be a great chance for the Oil Ministry to meet global oil companies and discuss their potential role in developing Iraq’s oil sector,” Jihad said.
Iraq’s Oil Ministry said that it is close to signing contracts to build two new oil refineries in southern Iraq, the Associated Press said.
The ministry is expected to sign one contract for a 300,000 barrel-per-day refinery in Nasiriyah province by the end of July or early August, a senior oil official said.
The official said the ministry was studying proposals presented by international companies to build another 150,000-barrel-per-day refinery in Karbala. The official, who declined to name the companies, spoke on condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to make statements.
Most analysts believe that the autonomous Iraqi Kurdistan region possesses far more oil than current forecasts hold — possibly as much as 45 billion barrels, which would put the Iraqi north alone on the level of petro-titans like Nigeria. Kurdistan’s “prospectivity is beyond doubt,” Micael Gulbenkian of the Canadian Heritage Oil Company, which does business in Kurdistan, said in a 2006 interview.
The trouble lies in getting the oil out of the ground, writes Spencer Ackerman with The Washington Independent.
Reuters said that Iraq’s fledgling navy of battered patrol boats is bulking up for a greater role in protecting the country’s economic heart, its offshore oil terminals.
Putting on muscle to protect the two terminals that account for 90 per cent of Iraq’s revenues, the tiny navy is aiming to boost manpower by about a third to 2,500 in two years and greatly expand its fleet, now centred on five Chinese-made Predator patrol boats.
More control over its wreck-ridden waters at the head of the Gulf is another sign of Iraq’s determination to secure its oil infrastructure and reserves, the world’s third largest.
The oil deals the Kurdish regional government and the central government in Baghdad are signing are illegal, according to a top Kurdish politician and legislator.
Mahmoud Othman, the head of the powerful Kurdish bloc in Iraqi parliament, described the signing of these deals as “a premature and out-of-lace move” in the absence of a national law organizing the exploitation of the country’s oil riches.
Othman is the first senior Kurdish officials to criticize the oil development deals the Kurdish regional government has signed, the Iraqi daily, Azzaman reported.
The Canadians are squeezing oil from sand. The Brazilians want to nurse it up through miles of seawater, sandstone and salt. But here in the far north of Iraq, oil is literally bubbling to the surface.
Oil executives lament that the age of “easy oil” is over. It isn’t over here. For companies that have stumbled into this corner of Iraq known as Kurdistan, it’s an era that has just begun, writes Neil King Jr. for The Wall Street Journal.
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I will be very eager to see which oil companies get teh contracts. I think that as Iraqi oil begins to be more developed the countries economy will improve and therefore the standard of living of its citizens.