18 January 2008 Iraq’s launch last week of a prequalification process for international oil companies ahead of a tender for undeveloped fields has drawn fire from smaller firms, which say the criteria and requirements set by the oil ministry exclude them from the competition and favor their bigger brethren, especially the majors. Oil ministry sources said the prequalification process is designed to determine “which companies could be called on to…
Tag: BP
Iraq Punishes Oil Firms With KRG Deals
16 January 2008 Iraqi Oil Minister Hussein al-Shahristani has followed up on threats to punish companies that sign deals with the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) by canceling the memoranda of understanding (MOU) some had inked with his ministry, a ministry source told International Oil Daily from Baghdad Tuesday. This is the first concrete step toward depriving them of any future deals with Baghdad. Al-Shahristani had persistently told companies that Baghdad…
Iraq: Paralysis At The Top
8 August 2008 More than nine months after they were first launched, Iraq’s technical support contracts (TSC) — the first commercial agreements with Big Oil since nationalization in the 1970s — are in limbo. The official view from Baghdad is that the short-term deals are losing their relevance due to protracted negotiations and the possibility that they will overlap with the award of long-term service contracts under the recently launched…
Iraq: New Models
14 March 2008 After struggling for five years to restore crude oil production to prewar levels, Baghdad is taking a pragmatic look at ways to involve international oil companies in developing its resources, sidestepping an internal debate over whether production sharing agreements (PSA) — the model preferred by Big Oil — are suited to Iraq. While discussions are ongoing with international oil companies, and between the Iraqi oil ministry and…