Pumping Up Khurmala

Erbil – It seems that Baghdad and Erbil have reached a tacit agreement on how to divide the contested oil fields between the region and the rest of the country. Or that’s at least what seems to be happening in Khurmala Dome, one of three major domes making up the giant Kirkuk oil field.

Khurmala Dome, which has de-facto become the Khurmala oil field, is the least developed of the three domes though it had numerous wells drilled. The others are the Baba and Avanah domes which have been producing for very long decades. The last time the Iraqi oil ministry and North Oil Co (NOC), which has been operating the field so far, were involved in Khurmala was in 2004…

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Avanah Dome . Avrasia . Baba Dome . crude processing . drilling . early production facility . Erbil . Erbil refinery . Hawrami . iraq oil . Kalak refinery . Kar Group . Khurmala . Kirkuk . KRG . Kurdistan . MNR . NOC . oil ministry . pipelines . production . Sheikh Baz Karim . Somo . wells The View from Baghdad

IDC’s Success Story

Iraq Drilling Co (IDC) is back in force and seems on the way to turn itself into a success story by teaming up with the big ones. After the short setback following the failed joint venture with Mesopotamia Petroleum, it has finally found the magic formula to play the leading role in the gigantic drilling effort that will take place across the Iraqi oil fields over the next few years.

In the first drilling tender launched earlier this year for drilling in Rumaila oil field, IDC bid jointly with Schlumberger, the world’s largest oilfield services provider and together they won a contract to drill 21 new wells and carry out workover jobs on 23 wells. IDC will supply three of its…

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al-Ghadban . bids . drilling . drilling tenders . Gharraf . Halliburton . IDC . Iraq drilling company . Majnoon . Mesopotamia Petroleum . Najmah . OEC . oil ministry . pipelines . pumping stations . Qayarah . rigs . Rumaila . Schlumberger . Scop. . service contracts . Shahristani . tank farm . Weatherford . wells . West Qurna . workover . Zubair The View from Baghdad

Watering the Oil Fields

Iraq is set to witness a few firsts when it comes to how oil fields have been and are being developed around the world. After all, at no time in the history of the industry has so many oil fields of this size been developed all at once in such a short time span. One of the major firsts will no doubt be the Common Seawater Supply Facility (CSSF) which will aim to process up to 15 million barrels per day of raw seawater from the Mideast Gulf in order to provide some 12 million b/d of treated water to be injected in fields in southern Iraq as they are developed. That makes it the biggest such project in the…

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1st bid round . 2nd bid round . bidding results . BP . CNOOC . common seawater supply facility . CSSF . drilling . ENI . Exxon . field development . Gharraf . Halfaya . Majnoon . Mideast Gulf . Missan . oil fields . oil ministry . Petronas . pipelines . rigs . Rumaila . seawater . service contracts . Shell . SOC . water cut . water flooding . water injection . West Qurna . Zubair The View from Baghdad

Pioneer CNPC

Wasit Province – About 2,000 Chinese workers are about to descend on Al-Ahdab oil field next month to start work on the construction of the central production facility, engineer Ahmad Abdul Redha, the chief of Al-Ahdab section at North Oil Co (NOC) tells me during a tour of the fortress camp that CNPC’s subsidiary, Al-Waha Petroleum, built just 15 km to the west of Kut.

With five rigs on the field, Daqing Drilling, CNPC’s drilling subsidiary, has drilled six new wells and carried workovers on three – out of seven drilled in the 1980’s – since launching work on Al-Ahdab in January 2009. By the end of the year, it’s expected to double the number of rigs in order to achieve…

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1997 . 1st bid round . 2008 . 2nd bid round . Al-Ahdab . Al-Waha . bids . CNPC . Daqing drilling . drilling . export . Kut . licensing rounds . NOC . Nouri al-Maliki . oil ministry . plateau . production . PSA . rigs . service contract . Shahristani . Wasit . Zubaidiya The View from Baghdad