Bid Round Five

By tendering new blocks for exploration, all of them close to the border with either Iran or Kuwait, Iraq is trying to catch up on the effort to increase its oil and gas reserves that has been interrupted by two major wars with the two neighbors in 1980 and 1990. To convince international oil companies to participate in this round, the fifth since Iraq opened its oil sector to foreign…

The Nassiriya Challenge

It’s unique, it’s challenging and it’s complex, but Iraq’s oil ministry seems determined to make the first upstream-downstream integrated project in Nassiriya a reality. What’s more, forget the $ per barrel fee that was the basis of all previous service contracts. On this one, investors will make a return on their investment from a percentage of the revenues Iraq will rake, pretty much like the “profit oil” concept in production-sharing…