Gas Fields Auction

After two delayed dates and three model contracts issued, one of which was withdrawn, Iraq has finally awarded its three gas fields of Akkas, Mansuriah and Siba to small oil companies pushing for a foot in Iraq’s energy sector. Having pre-qualified 13 companies, including France’s Total, Italy’s ENI and Norway’s Statoil, only five companies finally made it to Baghdad on Oct. 20th to participate in Iraq’s 3rd bid round in…

What’s Behind Iraq’s Reserves Revision

While one cannot exclude strategic motive to announce the reserves increase at this time, there is certainly room for doing so. Let us hope that the MoO is embarking on a policy of enlightening the industry, the public and the concerned Iraqi technocrats. The MoO statement while informative to the public, it is short of the necessary elaboration to be more meaningful to the oil technocrats. However, in my opinion Iraq oil reserves, as the…

Reserves Politics

Iraq’s newly announced proven oil reserves figure of 143.1 billion barrels is most likely closer to the reality than the old one of 115 billion bbls minus what has been produced since the last revision, which is put at 5 billion bbls. But the question is how did Iraq arrive at this magic number without new exploration or new discoveries and while 3-D seismic surveys for the southern oil fields…