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…

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…

BR4: The Lessons

Now that the fourth bid round is wrapped and closed with just one gas exploration block awarded in addition to two oil exploration blocks, it is time for Iraq’s oil ministry to draw lessons from the lackluster bid round and devise new ways to explore the Western Desert, thought to contain much of Iraq’s gas potential. The first lesson to draw is that upstream companies are not service companies, ready…