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The Iraqi Ministry of Oil (MoO) formally signed a joint venture agreement with Shell, the South Gas Company (SGC), an affiliate of MoO, and Mitsubishi Corporation (MC) on an initiative to capture associated gas in South Iraq. MC made an agreement with Shell to take a 5% interest in the project in August 2009. Following the Iraq government approval made on 15th November this year, SGC, Shell and MC have signed agreements associated with the project. These agreements create the Basrah Gas Company (BGC) Joint Venture, made up of Iraq's SGC (51%), Shell (44%) and MC (5%). Some 700 million...

A consortium led by China's top oil producer initialled a deal with Iraq on Tuesday to develop the southern Halfaya oil field, oil ministry spokesman Assem Jihad told AFP. "Yes, they signed the contract today," he said of the group made up of China National Petroleum Corp. (CNPC) and which also includes France's Total and Malaysia's Petronas. The three companies are aiming to increase production at Halfaya, which has proven reserves of 4.098 billion barrels of oil, to 535,000 barrels per day (bpd).

Iran confirmed Saturday that its forces had taken over East Maysan oil field, located on the Iran-Iraq border. The move caused a 2.4% spike in oil prices. "The Iranian forces are on Iranian soil, as defined by known international borders. This oil field is Iran's" said an Iranian armed forces statement quoted by the Islamic Republic Arab-language television station, al-Alam. Proprietary of the East Maysan oil field had been the center of a dispute between Tehran and Bagdad for a lengthy period of time. Iraq's Deputy Interior Minister Ahmed Ali al-Khafaji said the move was the latest in a series...

Those who claim that the U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003 to get control of the country's giant oil reserves will be left scratching their heads by the results of last weekend's auction of Iraqi oil contracts: Not a single U.S. company secured a deal in the auction of contracts that will shape the Iraqi oil industry for the next couple of decades. Two of the most lucrative of the multi-billion-dollar oil contracts went to two countries which bitterly opposed the U.S. invasion — Russia and China — while even Total Oil of France, which led the charge to deny international...

So much for America getting all the oil it spent billions of dollars, and thousands of lives to "liberate." ----- By SINAN SALAHEDDIN (AP) – 10 hours ago BAGHDAD — A consortium led by Russia's private oil giant won the biggest prize of Iraq's second oil auction this year, nabbing a field initially promised them a decade ago by Saddam Hussein while other companies Saturday showed little interest in offerings outside the secure southern part of the country. Lukoil and Norway's Statoil ASA won rights to develop the 12.88 billion barrel West Qurna Phase 2 field in the Basra region,...

Yesterday the New York Times reported the Norwegian financial newspaper Dagens Naeringsliv’s revelations that Peter Galbraith, a former US diplomat and advisor to the Kurdish regional government in northern Iraq, stands to make hundreds of millions of dollars in profit from Iraqi oil revenues. Galbraith’s profits would result from his cashing in on his links to the Kurdish regional leadership, and his role in drafting Iraq’s Constitution, shortly after the 2003 US invasion of Iraq. In 2004, Galbraith helped the Kurds arrange deals with Norwegian oil firm DNO and prepare for negotiations on the Iraqi Constitution, including controversial provisions on...

WASHINGTON — A leading energy developer said the United States has been excluded from Iraq's revived energy market. ShareThis T. Boone Pickens told Congress that U.S. companies were losing opportunities in the Iraqi crude oil and natural gas sectors to competitors from China and Europe. The senior executive said the United States could lose all influence in the Iraqi oil sector after the military withdrawal in 2011. "They're opening them [oil fields] up to other companies all over the world," Pickens told the Congressional Natural Gas Caucus on Oct. 21. "We leave there with the Chinese getting the oil," he...

BP and CNPC have won the right to help Iraq develop the Rumaila field. The UK and Chinese companies beat ExxonMobil, the US oil company, which had partnered with Petronas, the Malaysian oil company. BP clinched the contract when it agreed to reduce its fee per barrel from $3.99 to $2. But the rest of the auction has not gone as smoothly. In fact, so far, the smaller five of the eight oil and gas fields being auctioned off have failed to find a company willing to accept the narrow terms and the relatively low price Iraq is willing to...

The board of Addax, which is also listed in Toronto and based in Switzerland, has recommended a C$52.80 per share offer from Sinopec, the Chinese state oil and gas company. Addax has oil assets in West Africa and the Middle East, particularly the Kurdistan region of northern Iraq. The company has increased its crude oil production from 8.8m barrels per day ten to 134.7m barrels per day over the last ten years. -SNIP-The transaction is the second this month involving assets in Iraq's Kurdish territory after the region started exports at the beginning of June.

A tiny Canadian oil company has struck a giant oilfield in the Kurdistan region of northern Iraq that may contain up to 3 billion barrels of recoverable crude. Heritage Oil’s Miran West oil find is the largest to date in the semi-autonomous Kurdish region, and highlights the potential for further big discoveries in underexplored parts of Iraq, which already has the world’s third-largest proved oil reserves. It could also turn a spotlight on Baghdad’s long-running conflict with regional authorities over oil jurisdiction. “This is extremely important,” said Samuel Ciszuk, the Middle East energy analyst for IHS Global Insight, the international...

Iraq will offer 14 oilfields in a second licensing round expected to be announced by the end of this year or in early 2009, a senior Iraqi official said Monday. Abdullah al-Amir, an oil advisor to Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, didn't name which fields nor provide details on what sort of terms might be on offer to foreign companies. "The second licensing round will offer 14 oilfields," al-Amir told an Iraq petroleum conference here.

Royal Dutch Shell Plc, Europe's largest oil company, is examining possible oilfield projects in Iraq as the nation prepares to issue exploration permits next year, Chief Executive Officer Jeroen van der Veer said today. Shell may bid for Iraqi fields in the first half of 2009, van der Veer told reporters at a conference in London. Iraq expects to award contracts by June in its first oil-licensing round since the U.S. invasion in 2003, Oil Minister Hussain al- Shahristani said last month. "They've just issued the rules on how to bid,'' van der Veer said. "It's quite complicated; we will...

...Chuck Schumer, along with Claire McCaskill and John Kerry, responded quickly with a letter to Condoleezza Rice asking her to prevent the deals from going forward until there is an oil-revenue sharing law. Both Schumer and Kerry are on the Senate Finance Committee; Kerry and McCaskill are both surrogates for Barack Obama, whose campaign has been going after John McCain for McCain's new, oil company-friendly position on offshore drilling. Here's the release along with the letter (which, weirdly, doesn't include McCaskill's name at the end of it). SCHUMER, KERRY & McCASKILL SEEK TO BLOCK BIG OIL’S NO-BID CONTRACTS IN IRAQ...

Iraqi Oil Minister Hussain al-Shahristani laid out details Monday of the country's first- ever oil licensing round, and said the national government will have firm control over several oil fields that will be jointly developed with foreign companies. Shahristani said Iraqi state-run entities will have 51% control in projects to rehabilitate six oil fields already producing crude and two natural gas fields yet to be developed. Foreign companies will have 49% in projects and operate under fee-based service contracts.

Thanks to three Democrat American senators, China will be pumping Iraqi oil Read it and weep. No Oil for Blood by Frederick W. Kagan. We have been thoughly infiltrated and route. If Obama snatches the White House ........... it's over. Over at the Weekly Standard (hat tip ejo) One would have thought that leading Democratic senators who claim to be interested in finding other sources of funding to replace American dollars in Iraq, in helping Iraq spend its own money on its own people, and in lowering the price of gasoline for American citizens, would have been all for it....

One would have thought that leading Democratic senators who claim to be interested in finding other sources of funding to replace American dollars in Iraq, in helping Iraq spend its own money on its own people, and in lowering the price of gasoline for American citizens, would have been all for it. Instead, Senators Chuck Schumer, John Kerry, and Claire McCaskill wrote a letter to Secretary of State Rice asking her "to persuade the GOI [Government of Iraq] to refrain from signing contracts with multinational oil companies until a hydrocarbon law is in effect in Iraq." The Bush administration wisely...

Yesterday morning, I had the honor of testifying before the House Budget Committee on the situation in Iraq. The discussion was polite and civilized, and was a reminder that even now it is possible for people who disagree about what to do in Iraq to argue without raised voices and disagreeable language (apart from the Code Pink women, yelling for those who think that shouting opponents down is preferable to arguing with them). Congressman Brian Baird once again demonstrated that it is possible even for those who bitterly opposed the war to recognize the importance of doing the right thing...

Iraq Cancels Six No-Bid Oil Deals United Press International 9/11/2008 URL: http://www.rigzone.com/news/article.asp?a_id=66533 The Iraqi government said it has canceled six oil contracts with foreign companies that were awarded in June in a no-bid arrangement. One-year contracts with Shell, Chevron, Total, BP, ExxonMobil and others, meant to increase Iraqi oil production by a 500,000 barrels a day, were canceled after Democratic U.S. senators complained the deals could interfere with Iraqi efforts to pass an energy policy law and reach a revenue-sharing agreement among Kurds, Sunnis and Shiites, The New York Times reported Thursday. To go ahead with the no-bid contracts "would...

Iraq oil contract for Chinese firm THE significance of the success of China’s state-owned CNPC in winning the first big oil contract awarded by the Iraqi government is not yet clear. Some analysts believe the $3 billion 20-year deal to develop and run the Ahdab field in Wasit province, 100 miles south of Baghdad, is a worrying marker for Western oil majors jockeying for position to win other contracts to develop Iraq’s oil and gas fields and neglected hydrocarbon infrastructure. Though the full details are not yet released, the Chinese appear to have accepted far tougher terms over the field...

An Iraqi plan to award six no-bid contracts to Western oil companies, which came under sharp criticism from several United States senators this summer, has been withdrawn, participants in the negotiations said on Wednesday. Iraq's oil minister, Hussain al-Shahristani, told reporters at an OPEC summit meeting in Vienna on Tuesday that talks with Exxon Mobil, Chevron, Shell, Total, BP and several smaller companies for one-year deals, which were announced in June and subsequently delayed, had dragged on for so long that the companies could not now fulfill the work within that time frame. The companies confirmed on Wednesday that the...