Major Oil Companies Are Circling Iraq

[sabra]

Source: business week

With stability returning, Oil Minister al-Shahristani has big plans to make his country the fourth-largest oil producer

With security in Iraq improving, international oil companies are quickly moving in, often with little or no fanfare. Hanter Gasser, Royal Dutch Shell's (RDS) top executive for Iraq, recently spent a week in Basra, site of the country's biggest fields, checking on a joint venture Shell is starting with the Iraqis to find commercial uses for the gas that is flared off during oil production. Gasser says Iraq burns off enough gas to power two countries the size of Jordan.

Shell is one of about 30 oil companies, including ExxonMobil, Chevron, and BP, that are pursuing licensing agreements with Baghdad. Iraq intends to boost production in seven fields holding an estimated 44 billion barrels of reserves, more than a third of its total. Those agreements are supposed to be awarded in a few months. "We have high interest in Iraq, and we are waiting to see the terms," Gasser says. Iraqi oil production, at a low 2.5 million barrels a day, is just where it was before the war. If Iraq produced anywhere near its targeted 6 million barrels a day, it could change the industry's dynamics and curb talk of a looming shortage.
AGAINST OPEC'S FLOW

The key player is Oil Minister Hussein Al-Shahristani, a Canada-educated nuclear scientist and chemical engineer who spent 11 years in Abu Ghraib prison for refusing to help Saddam Hussein build a nuclear weapon. He is feeling huge pressure to boost production to compensate for falling prices. In an interview in Vienna, where he was attending an OPEC conference, Al-Shahristani came across as impeccably polite. He's also a nationalist, determined that Iraq regain its rightful place in the industry and the Middle East, whatever the objections of Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states, which might not welcome the rise of another Shiite-dominated petropower.

...

Later Al-Shahristani added by e-mail: "By the time we reach 6 million barrels per day in five to six years there will so much demand for Iraqi oil as other countries will go through a declining phase, and we do not expect much restriction on our production ceiling."

Read more: http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/09_14/b4125070227376.htm?campaign_id=rss_as

[acmavm]

1. Mission Accomplished!

[NickB79]

2. Hmm, talk of a looming shortage you say?

Sounds like a subtle way of saying the oil industry has noticed that nagging little problem of Peak Oil, and sees Iraq as their last chance to grab a few more years of prosperity.....