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Over 70 firms bid for Iraq oil contracts
18.2.2008
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February 18, 2008
BAGHDAD - More than 70 international firms
have registered to compete for tenders to help
develop Iraq's oil reserves, seen as vital to
providing the funds to rebuild the shattered
country, Iraq's oil ministry said on Monday.
Iraq currently produces only a fraction of its vast
reserves, the third-largest in the world and among
the cheapest to produce, and international oil firms
have been positioning for years to gain access.
Big oil firms such as Royal Dutch Shell, Total,
Repsol YPF, ConocoPhillips, BP, and Norway's
StatoilHydro are among firms that have said they
have registered or intended to do so.
"We are going to carefully study and check the
documentation. Next month we will declare the
companies which are permitted to work in the Iraqi
oilfields," Oil Ministry spokesman Asim Jihad told
Reuters.
Iraq produces about 2.3 million barrels of oil a
day, dwarfed by its 115 billion barrels of proven
crude oil reserves. Only those of Saudi Arabia and
Iran are larger.
An oil official said last year Iraq's oil sector
could need as much as $75 billion in investment.
Iraq has not said what fields it will tender, or on
what terms, but the service and extraction contracts
on offer are seen as a stop-gap until a crucial oil
law is passed,www.ekurd.net
and will not provide the
long-term involvement big oil companies crave.
POLITICAL WRANGLING
Violence and political wrangling over the oil law,
which will decide how to share the country's oil
wealth among its different regions, has stifled
foreign input in the oil sector.
Iraq's cabinet agreed to a draft oil law a year ago
but disputes with the Kurdistan regional government
and objections from Shi'ite and Sunni Arab
politicians have delayed it.
No end to the impasse is in sight, Iraqi officials
and lawmakers say.
Some oil companies had already signed deals with the
largely autonomous northern Kurdistan region, a move
that has angered the government in Baghdad,www.ekurd.net
which has threatened to
blacklist them and declare the deals illegal.
BP has no plans to send personnel into Iraq until
the security situation improves, but would be
interested in service agreements and cooperation
with Iraq, BP has said.
Meanwhile, Iraq's oil infrastructure still is
frequently targeted by insurgents, and rival groups
in Iraq's mainly Shi'ite south -- Iraq's oil
exporting hub -- are locked in a bloody battle for
supremacy.
Reuters
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