Iraq Squeezed in a Russian-Saudi Contest

Russia has decided to go to war against U.S. shale, dropping its alliance with OPEC that helped save the day when a glut in oil markets was biting hard at its revenues. Saudi Arabia launched a price war in retaliation at Russia’s refusal to agree to deeper output cuts, slashing the official price of its crude by the most in more than two decades and vowing to increase output by…

What’s Next for Iraq’s Oil & Gas Industry

As the IOCs are moving now towards fulfilling the requirements of the rehabilitation and preliminary development plans of the first phase of the contracts of the mega projects starting to prepare enhanced and final development plans for the second phase and ramping up of production towards the PPTs, many discussions arose and opinions were expressed about the need, or otherwise, for revising the PPTs downwards, increasing the time allowed to…

Iraq’s Strategy and Reserves Replacement

Reserves replacement is to be taken seriously from a strategic planning point of view. As the country has embarked on a substantial program to build up Iraq’s crude oil and gas production capacity in cooperation with international oil companies, the fifteen oil fields to be developed and produced in accordance with the twelve contracts contain some 100 billion barrels of proven reserves based on the reserves revision released by the…