Iraq’s offering in the fourth bid round announced this week is a mixed bag of blocks open for exploration. Spread over several provinces but mostly focused in the west, the area the least explored over the past decades, they offer potential to explore for gas as well as oil. About eight of the 12 blocks offered are situated along the western border from the northwestern Iraq-Syria border down to the…
Category: The View from Baghdad
The weekly article from Baghdad
Bid Round 4
Iraq’s oil ministry has set the ball rolling for its fourth bid round in two years by inviting international oil companies to pre-qualify to bid in its licensing round to be launched later this year. What’s on offer this time is 12 blocks or so, spread across the country where companies will be exploring for, primarily gas, but also for oil. Though Iraq does not need to develop any more…
Budget 2011: Who Gets What
The Iraqi 2011 federal budget voted by parliament today includes two items that are related to payments to oil companies. It stipulates a payment of $1.75 billion as participation in the production cost of oil exported including under contracts of international oil companies signed with the Kurdistan region. The second item is an allocation of $2.73 billion for investment projects of international oil companies. The budget assumes the export of…
KRG Contracts Conundrum
Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki announced earlier this month that the oil ministry approved the two production sharing contracts for the Tawke and Taqtaq fields, signed before the constitution was drafted, for a variety of reasons which to his mind justify the legalization by Baghdad. A day after Mr Maliki was interviewed, the Kurdish Prime Minister Barham Saleh was quoted as saying that “all contracts” signed by the KRG received…