Pipeline Lessons

Iraq has launched its latest oil export infrastructure expansion project; a new pipeline that would carry crude from southern Iraq across Jordan to the port of Aqaba on the Red Sea. When completed, the pipeline would carry crude from the southern oil fields in Basrah and Missan, as well as the Midland fields such as Nassiriya, Gharaf and Badra to be exported through a new terminal, primarily to markets in…

Halfaya Adds New Horizons

Halfaya oil field in Missan province is set to become the second green field to add significant production, after Ahdab, since Iraq’s oil ministry started awarding service contracts to international oil companies. A ceremony to celebrate the first commercial production from Halfaya field at a rate of 70,000 barrels per day, is set for July, the director general of Missan Oil Co (MOC) Ali Muarij tells me. With this new…

2nd Bid Round Results

In response to Mr. I Chalabi’s comments, with all due respect I disagree with his remarks for the following reasons: There is certainly warranted rush to award all the fields included in both rounds, and more to come; a wider perspective on the role of oil in Iraq’s future is being lost. After years of misrule and total bad management coupled with the effects of sanctions, and the post-2003 violence,…

Iraq Vs Opec

Thamir al-Ghadban writes: “In view of the country’s  need for greater revenue to satisfy its people’s needs and its desire to improve the living conditions after the long years of deprivation; the lost capacity over the past three decades which benefited other producing countries many of which sit on hundreds of billions of dollars in sovereign funds; forecasts of future supply and demand and the expected decline in the output…