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Iraq wants to revive national oil firm

(Agencies)
Updated: 2009-07-30 00:13

BAGHDAD: The Iraqi Cabinet has approved a plan to revive a national oil company to help the battered nation upgrade its dilapidated oil industry, an official said Wednesday.

The Oil Ministry has also decided to conclude bidding to develop 10 oil fields by the end of November.

The Iraqi National Oil Co was established in 1964 but Saddam Hussein dissolved it in 1987 due to the ongoing Iraq-Iran war that was hampering oil activities around the country.

Thamer al-Ghadhban, an energy adviser to Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, said the law would give the INOC wide authority to search for new fields, manage the productive ones, work on those that are still undeveloped, as well as issue bonds and ask for loans.

In a statement issued late Tuesday, government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh said the bill was accepted by the Cabinet and had been sent to parliament for approval, but gave no details. Iraq's parliament is in recess until September.

The bill joins three others on oil issues, including a law that has been stalled in parliament over disputes about who has the final say in developing the wealth in the various parts of the country.

The yet-to-be established corporation will act as a holding company for the three existing regional state-run oil companies: the Basra-based South Oil Co, the Kirkuk-based North Oil Co and Maysan Oil Co in the southern Maysan province.

According to the bill, the company would have its own budget and would be run by a board of directors headed by a chairman with ministerial powers, al-Ghadhban told The Associated Press in a phone interview.

In February 2007, Iraq's Cabinet endorsed an oil and gas law to set the rules for foreign investment in Iraq's oil industry. Disputes later emerged between the Kurds and central government, mainly over who has the final say in managing oil and gas fields.

The Kurds have signed nearly two dozen oil deals with international oil companies since the 2003 US-led invasion, but the Arab-dominated central government maintains the deals are illegal since they were not approved in Baghdad.

Also Wednesday, the Oil Ministry's spokesman, Assem Jihad, said the ministry has set the end of November as the deadline to conclude the country's second bidding round for the development of 10 oil fields. Jihad said a meeting will be held on Aug 25 in Istanbul to brief qualified companies.

Nine international oil companies have qualified to take part in the second round of bidding. The first round wrapped up last month, with only one deal made to develop a single oil field.

Although Iraq sits on the world's third-largest oil reserve, with at least 115 billion barrels, the country is producing and exporting far below its potential because of decades of war, lack of investment, UN sanctions, a brain drain and insurgent attacks.

Its daily production ranges between 2.3 to 2.4 million barrels a day. Exports in the second quarter of this year jumped to an average 1.885 million barrels a day, from about 1.8 million barrels in the first quarter.

Revenues in the first half of this year stood at about $16 billion.

The country hopes to add 300,000 to 500,000 barrels per day by the end of 2010 through an emergency plan started early this year to drill new wells and install production surface plants in a number of its oil fields in southern Iraq.

It also plans to produce 4.5 million barrels a day by 2013 and up to 6 million barrels a day by 2015.

The overall fall of oil prices since last year has forced the government to slash spending plans for this year from $79 billion to $58.6 billion. The oil sector represents about 65 percent of gross domestic product and its revenues account for 95 percent of Iraq's earnings.