Ashti Hawrami

The Kurdistan Regional Government’s minister of natural resources, Ashti Hawrami, spoke to Ruba Husari in Erbil late July on the latest developments in Kurdistan’s upstream and downstream sector, the smuggling controversy, differences with Baghdad over crude exports and the fate of the federal hydrocarbon law.

Q. What’s the status of the different contracts signed so far with the KRG and how is work progressing on the ground?

A. We have 40 companies working in exploration and production, and a large number of service providers to go with that. They all have their individual contracts, and minimum obligations under production sharing contracts that they signed. There are 10-12 oil rigs in operation at the moment. There are 4-5 seismic crews active…

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Ashti Hawrami . auction . Barham Salih . Basrah . Bazyan refinery . constitution . DFI . DNO . Dohuk . elections . exports . fuel oil . hydrocarbon law . Iran . iraq oil . Kalak refinery . Kar Group . Kirkuk . KRG . KRG hydrocarbon law . KRG model contract . Mosul . naphtha . NOC . Nouri al-Maliki . oil ministry . Opec . production . production sharing . revenue sharing . Rumaila . service contracts . Shahristani . SOC . Suleimaniya . Taqtaq . Tawke . topping plants The Interview

Crude Oil Exports Data

Somo Lifters
Crude Exports 2009
Crude Exports 2010

2010 . April . Basrah Crude . buyers . daily . data . exports . February . iraq oil . January . Kirkuk crude . lifters . lifting . March . May . monthly . monthly data . oil . oil ministry . prices . revenue . Somo . yearly Somo Data

Thamir al-Ghadhban

Thamir al-Ghadhban, former Iraqi Minister of Oil and Chairman of the Advisory Commission at the Prime Minister’s office, gives his take on the latest developments in Iraq’s oil sector and analyses future trends in an interview in Baghdad with Ruba Husari.

Q: How do you expect a new government following the March 7 legislative elections to deal with the signed contracts? Is there a risk that the legality of those contracts might be challenged by a future government if it’s not led by the same party that legalized them?

A: I expect any new government that will formed in the coming months to accept the signed contracts and continue with their implementation. I don’t think there is any risk there related to…

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1st bid round . 2nd bid round . cash flow . decline rate . elections . exports . garraf . gas . Haditha . Halfaya . INOC . IOCs . K3 . Kirkuk . KRG . Kurdistan . LNG . Main Pay . Majnoon . Midland Oil Co . Mishrif . MOC . NOC . oil and gas law . oil ministry . parliament . peak oil . pipelines . plateau . production . PSA . ratification . recovery rates . refineries . remuneration . results . Rumaila . service contracts . Shahristani . Shura council . SOC . Somo . Syria . terminals . thamir al-Ghadhban . Turkey . West Qurna . western desert . Zubair The Interview

A Mis-match of Infrastructure?

Issam al-Chalabi writes:

“Iraq is a landlocked country with a narrow opening to the Gulf. That by itself has been the cause of many conflicts with neighbouring Iran and Kuwait, meaning that, in addition to utilizing its Gulf outlet, Iraq must send oil through other neighboring countries to provide additional and alternative export outlets. This again has been a source of political conflicts and confrontations ever since the commercial discovery of oil in Baba Gurgur in Kirkuk in 1927, when there were differences between the French and the British as to whether the terminal IPC was planning should be in Haifa in Palestine (under British mandate) or Banias in Syria (under French mandate).

The current stampede by the government of Prime Minister…

1st bid round . 2nd bid round . exports . Maliki . pipelines . Shahristani . terminals The Forum