Bid Round Four Results

Block 1 Bidders & Bids: None Ministry’s maximum acceptable Remuneration fee: –  Location: The block lies within the northwestern part of Iraq, about 100 km west of Mosul by the Syria-Iraq border and covers an area of around 7,300 km2. Geology: Located in Rutba-Jezira tectonic zone, large structures remain undrilled. Two wells have been drilled in the north and the south of the block. Oil was tested from the Miocene and…

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…

What’s Behind Iraq’s Reserves Revision

While one cannot exclude strategic motive to announce the reserves increase at this time, there is certainly room for doing so. Let us hope that the MoO is embarking on a policy of enlightening the industry, the public and the concerned Iraqi technocrats. The MoO statement while informative to the public, it is short of the necessary elaboration to be more meaningful to the oil technocrats. However, in my opinion Iraq oil reserves, as the…

Reserves Politics

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…