Tuesday, May 15, 2007
Iraq to invite India to establish refineries
Oil
(NDTV Profit) - Iraq will press Indian firms to set up refineries there during a four-day visit to India by Oil Minister Hussain al-Shahristani later this month, an Iraqi official said on Monday. "We will invite India to establish refineries in Iraq ... the capacity of our refineries is very limited," said Muayad Hussain, Iraq's charge d'affaires in India. Shahristani is due in India from 24-27 May.
Iraq has a refining capacity of 603,000 barrels per day. It produces 477,000 bpd of refined products and consumption stands at 514,000 bpd, according to the OPEC Web site. During a visit to the Saudi capital Riyadh earlier this month, Oil Minister Murli Deora met Shahristani. The participation of Indian state explorer Oil and Natural Gas Corp. and other firms in Iraq's oil sector was raised.T he Iraqi minister invited Indian Oil Corp. and Engineers India Ltd. to consider entering the downstream sector.
Hussain said in New Delhi that the exploration of the Tuba oil field in southern Iraq could also feature in talks between the two countries. ONGC, Reliance Industries Ltd. and Algeria's Sonatrach tried in 2000 to secure Tuba. Iraq is expected to enact an oil law by May-end that would allow its various regions to negotiate oilfield contracts with foreign investors.
Baghdad desperately needs foreign investment to revive its shattered economy, which relies heavily on oil export revenues. The country straddles the world's third largest oil reserves. Decades of war, sanctions, under-investment and now widespread violence and sabotage have left it critically short of fuel. It has to import nearly half of all its gasoline. Iraq has eight refineries, none of which were damaged during the U.S.-led invasion in 2003. Oil officials say that Iraq's refineries are operating at only 50-75 percent of capacity, forcing Baghdad to import most of its fuel.
Labels: Engineers India Ltd., Hussain al-Shahristani, India, Oil and Natural Gas Corp., oil refineries, Tuba oil field
Saturday, April 07, 2007
Asian companies likely to get first Iraqi oil contracts
Oil
(India Times) - Despite whispers in some quarters that the Bush administration invaded Iraq to take control of its oil, the first contracts with major oil firms from Iraq's new government are likely to go not to US companies, but rather to firms from China, India, Vietnam, and Indonesia. "While Iraqi lawmakers struggle to pass an agreement on exactly who will award the contracts and how the revenue will be shared, experts say a draft version that passed the cabinet earlier this year will likely uphold agreements previously signed by those countries under Saddam Hussein's government," CNNMoney.Com has said in a report citing energy experts.
"The Chinese could announce something within the next few months" if all goes well with the oil law, James Placke, a senior associate at Cambridge Energy Research Associates who specializes in the Middle East has been cited in the report. The Asian firms are advantaged and for several reasons: they are less constrained by Western sanctions during the Hussein regime, they've been operating in Iraq and know the country's oilfields, according to Falah Aljibury, an energy analyst who has advised several Iraqi oil ministers as well as other OPEC nations.
Aljibury said the first contracts likely awarded will be to the Chinese in the south central part of Iraq, the Vietnamese in the south, the Indians along the Kuwaiti border, and the Indonesians in the western desert;but that the contracts under consideration are small. According to Aljibury, the Chinese agreement is to produce about 70,000 barrels of oil a day, while the Vietnamese one is for about 60,000. The report said it is hard to to put a dollar amount on what those contracts might be worth, as security costs, drilling conditions and the exact terms to be offered by Baghdad are unknown. But the barrel amount is tiny even by Iraq's depressed post-war production of around 2 million barrels a day.
Labels: China, contracts, India, Indonesia, oil, Vietnam
