Drilling Deep in Badra

Drilling in the Badra oil field in the east of Iraq is long and painful. The Iranians had this experience with first six wells drilled in their part of the shared oilfield in the past and now Russia’s Gazprom with its partners are laboring over the deep wells, having the same frustrating and sometimes disappointing experience as foreign operators who drilled on the other side of the border in recent…

Budget 2011: Who Gets What

The Iraqi 2011 federal budget voted by parliament today includes two items that are related to payments to oil companies. It stipulates a payment of $1.75 billion as participation in the production cost of oil exported including under contracts of international oil companies signed with the Kurdistan region. The second item is an allocation of $2.73 billion for investment projects of international oil companies. The budget assumes the export of…

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…