Word: iraq
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...Even before the auction, analysts warned that Iraq's plans for attracting the investment necessary to crank up its output were overly optimistic. Iraq plans to retain ownership of its oil, but make long-term agreements with foreign companies to run the operations. But Oil Minister Hussein Shahristani demanded that oil companies lower their profit expectations, offering to pay them $2 for every barrel pumped in Iraq rather than the $4-a-barrel rate sought by oil executives. Chevron, which had negotiated for a year to develop Iraq's second-biggest field, West Qurna, pulled out of the deal...
...notion that the invasion of Iraq was simply an oil grab took another hit on Tuesday when Baghdad opened the bidding on the rights to develop its massive energy reserves. In a day-long auction of eight huge oil fields - some of the world's biggest - virtually all the 41 foreign companies invited to bid by the Iraqi government balked at the Baghdad terms. The only contract signed was a 20-year deal for a consortium led by BP and China's National Petroleum Corporation to develop the giant Rumaila field in southern Iraq. "Frankly I did not think...
...were put off by the prices demanded by the Iraqi government, and continuing concerns over the security situation in the country. And their caution has dealt a blow to Baghdad's efforts to raise billions of dollars desperately needed to rebuild. (Watch a video about the gas shortage in Iraq...
...Iraq remains enormously tantalizing for Big Oil, whose prospects for tapping huge new fields around the world are shrinking. The country's 115 billion barrels in proven reserves, most of it untapped, make it perhaps the last major oil territory yet to be spoken for. Engineers recently estimated that there may even be a further 150 billion barrels underground that have not yet been surveyed, much of it in the vast Western Desert. If true, Iraq could one day potentially match Saudi Arabia, whose output of 9.6 million barrels a day makes it the world's largest producer. Iraq currently...
...Iraq's industry has gone to seed in the decades of war and sanctions, as well as the expulsion of foreign oil companies by Saddam Hussein in 1972. But its potential remains massive, especially when compared with the dwindling reserves of the North Sea, the fact that most Middle Eastern fields are already being pumped, and that new deposits elsewhere offshore and in the Arctic are remote and expensive to develop...