South Oil Co (SOC) Director General Dhiya Jaafar gives an update on the state of Iraqi oil production, infrastructure expansion and ongoing projects and problems in an interview with Ruba Husari Nov. 1st, 2010, in his office in Basrah. Q: How do you explain the continued decline in production at Rumaila oil field where BP was the first to sign a development contract, precisely to arrest the decline and increase…
Iraq’s newly announced proven oil reserves figure of 143.1 billion barrels is most likely closer to the reality than the old one of 115 billion bbls minus what has been produced since the last revision, which is put at 5 billion bbls. But the question is how did Iraq arrive at this magic number without new exploration or new discoveries and while 3-D seismic surveys for the southern oil fields…
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…
The long-awaited party is over and now the real work is about to start. This is when the winners start going over the nitty-gritty of the model contract to try and tie loose ends in a bid to pull the extra mile out of a service contract. But at the end of the day, a service contract is a service contract. There is only so much one can adjust and…
