According to the business daily, the report, which it said was the most comprehensive independent survey of
“Obviously the security situation is very bad, but when you look at the sub-surface opportunity, there isn’t anywhere like this”, Ron Mobed, head of IHS’s energy division, was quoted as saying by the FT. “Geologically, it’s right up there, a gold star opportunity”.
Doubling
IHS also said that
The consultancy’s study of
It is all dependent on improved security in the country, and that has been slow in coming.
‘Draft law keeps oil in Iraqi hands’
Iraqi officials insisted Wednesday that a controversial bill due to be submitted to Parliament will keep the country’s oil wealth in Iraqi hands and benefit all of its warring communities.
“Under no circumstances would
The bill, approved by the Shiite-led government in February after months of wrangling, opens
But Shahristani said incentives to international oil companies to invest in the industry would be through the profit margins they will achieve, “not by control of
Some Iraqi oil experts and politicians have voiced concern that production sharing contracts envisaged by the bill will deliver the country’s oil riches to foreign firms on a platter.
Others have objected to powers given to regional authorities to negotiate contracts.
But current output reaches barely two million BPD as a result of the combined effects of decades of under-investment in infrastructure and rampant insecurity since the invasion.
The draft law, which would create a federal oil and gas council, aims to distribute oil revenues equitably among
The proposed central fund shows that the law “is in the interest of all
Most oil production is in the Shiite South, with the best prospects for new finds centred on the mainly-Kurdish North, which has its own regional government.
The Kurds also claim the existing northern oilfields around the city of
The Sunnite Arab former elite, which lives mainly in areas of Central Iraq without oil reserves, has voiced concern that under a fully federal system it might lose out on its share of oil income.
But the Kurdish regional government’s oil minister, Ashti Hawrami, said the bill agreed by the government already went too far in trying to assuage Sunnite fears and did not square with the federal provisions of the constitution.
Hawrami complained that annexes to the bill envisage putting 82 percent of
Should Parliament fail to pass the law by the agreed end-of-May deadline, the
He said the regional government wanted to “directly manage” its share of oil revenues and not be told by the federal government how to spend its money.
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