Kurdistan Region plans bid round

The Kurdistan Region of Iraq will launch a bidding round for its open acreage, Minister of Natural Resources Dr Ashti Hawrami told TOGY.

In an exclusive interview, his first in many months, the minister said the bid round would help attract new investors. “The acreage consists of some 20 promising and attractive blocks, most with wells and seismic data and some blocks have discoveries and proven commercial production potential,” Dr Hawrami said. No exact timeline for the round has been communicated but evidence suggests it could happen in 2017.

The new follows a round of relinquishments that saw companies such as Chevron, Gulf Keystone, Oil Search and Repsol let go of assets in the Kurdistan Region. Of the mentioned companies, only Oil Search has decided to withdraw completely. Over the past few months, the MNR has worked to make block boundary changes to delineate the 20 new blocks on its map for the region, which was first published in The Oil & Gas Year Kurdistan Region of Iraq 2016 edition that debuted on Monday.

Dr Hawrami also touched upon the MNR’s plans for 2017, saying that gross production levels of 700,000 bopd could be achieved by the end of the year, citing “renewed momentum.” On the topic of a possible crude export route via Iran, the minister said media reports had been “premature.”

“There have been ministry-to-ministry discussions with our Iranian friends over the last two to three years and we have explored together a range of possible areas of energy co-operation, but we have not yet really progressed to an agreement,” he said, adding that the KRG would “welcome the chance to advance co-operation on bilateral infrastructure routes at least to facilitate oil/gas swap arrangements between both sides.”

Of the oil arrangement between Baghdad and Erbil, in place since this summer, Dr Hawrami said it was “working well.” “Perhaps some outside observers don’t realise that away from the political spotlight, the technical co-operation on the ground between the KRG and the federal oil authorities is very encouraging, particularly with the NOC [North Oil Company] in Kirkuk and with SOMO at the export terminal in Ceyhan.”

The minister expects the agreement to lay the foundation for better working relations with Baghdad in an effort to find practical solutions for the outstanding issues between the two parties. “The new [oil] minister, Jabar Al Luaibi, is a very experienced oil official and I look forward to working with him,” Dr Hawrami concluded.