Oil Assessment Work Gets Going in North Iraq

2 May 2003 A team from US Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg, Brown and Root (KBR) on Thursday started assessment work at Iraq’s northern oil fields, as part of a contract the company holds with the US military, a KBR official told International Oil Daily on the scene. “We are looking at various units and assessing oil and gas production facilities in coordination with [Iraq’s] North Oil Co. (NOC) management,” Rick Hopper,…

Oil Board Firms Up in Iraq; Somo Shattered

1 May 2003 US plans to set up an advisory board to oversee Iraq’s oil sector are taking shape. Fadhil Othman, a retired Iraqi oil marketing official now living in Turkey, is understood to have accepted Washington’s request that he serve as deputy head of the oil advisory board, a non-executive body. In view of Othman’s past experience as head of Iraq’s State Oil Marketing Organization (Somo), he “could be…

In Kirkuk, Oil Firm Struggles Back to Feet

24 April 2003 Until two weeks ago, Iraq’s North Oil Co. (NOC) was responsible for production capacity of more than 1 million barrels per day, centering on the giant Kirkuk oil field. Output came to an abrupt halt two weeks ago, when northern Iraq fell to US-led forces. And now, NOC appears to have been battered almost out of existence: Its headquarters are destroyed, its data is lost, and equipment…

Big Fish

14 July 2000 Preparing for the day when UN sanctions are finally lifted, Iraq went touting its oil wares to an international audience in Paris last week. The audience – which included supergiants Exxon Mobil, Royal Dutch/Shell, BP Amoco, and Total Fina Elf, as well as a host of slightly smaller fry – also got to hear about some ambitious post-sanctions marketing plans, including moves to recapture more of the…