Iraq Supergiants to Hit 2.1 Million BPD End 2010
| May 22, 2010 | Filled under All Dinar Trade Articles |
Saturday, 22 May 2010, Reuters, Basra-
Iraq expects crude output from its southern oilfields, Rumaila, Majnoon and West Qurna Phase one, to reach about 2.1 million barrels per day by the end of this year, the head of South Oil Co. (SOC) said on Friday.
State-run SOC gave the estimates after international firms presented development plans and started issuing tenders for work in the supergiant fields, company head Dhiya Jaafar told Reuters in an interview.
Iraq, in desperate need of cash to rebuild after years of economic sanctions and underinvestment, has opened its vast oil reserves and some untapped fields to global oil companies.
It struck major deals in two auctions last year in a bid to raise its production capacity to Saudi Arabian levels of 12 million bpd in seven years from 2.5 million bpd now.
The potential workload in Iraq is unprecedented in the history of the oil industry.
Jaafar said the output target from Rumaila – the backbone of Iraq’s oil production – is expected to hit 1.085 million bpd after July this year from 1.065 million bpd now, and a more than 10 percent increase in production by the end of the year.
That would take the total production level from the field to about 1.2 million bpd.
BP and China’s CNPC signed a 20-year development contract last year to lift output at Rumaila, which has 17 billion barrels of estimated crude reserves.
“In Rumaila … starting from the month of July, there will be obvious increases,” he said in his office in the southern oil hub city of Basra.
“We expect the increase to start after the month of July, from 1.065 million bpd to 1.085 million bpd and then to 1.100 million bpd and so on.”
To reach such a production level, a series of tenders worth more than $500 million have been issued, including drilling 56 new oil wells, purchasing electric submersible pumps and…(more story)
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