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

IDC’s Grand Plans

Iraq Drilling Co (IDC) is forging ahead with building its own drilling capacity while waiting for the oil ministry to pick one of its many suitors to establish a new joint venture after the first attempt with Mesopotamia Petroleum faltered last month. “Two years ago no company would come and work in Iraq so we had to go with Mesopotamia even though it had no track record. Today, many reputable and recognized companies are knocking on our door and we think we will be better off with one of them,” Senior Deputy Oil Minister for upstream Abdul Karim al-Luaybi tells me.

If anything, the first bid round in June seems to have unleashed the Iraqi potential. It revealed just how much…

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1st bid round . 2nd bid round . Abdul Karim al-Luaybi . Al-Maliki . Banyas . drilling . exports . IDC . Kirkuk . Mesopotamia Petroleum . pipelines . Ramco . rigs . Syria The View from Baghdad

Rigging vs Drilling

I personally had never heard of Ramco Energy or the man behind it, Steve Remp, before July 2008 when oil minister Hussein Al-Shahristani said to me in an interview in his office in Baghdad that Iraq Drilling Co (IDC) is forming a joint venture with this company that would transform the Iraqi state company into a drilling giant. A quick search and I understood why I could have never heard of either. I was never interested in pipe-coating, the main business Ramco has been involved in or Azerbaijan, where the Texan oilman apparently made his name by securing equity in a Caspian oil field after the fall of the Soviet Union. So, that’s what it takes to transform IDC into…

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2009 . drilling . drilling rigs . IDC . IOSCo . Mesopotamia Petroleum . Ramco . Shahristani . Steve Remp The View from Baghdad