BAGHDAD: French energy giant Total signed mega contracts with Iraq worth $27 billion to develop oil fields, natural gas and a crucial water project.
Officials said Monday the contracts will be key for the oil-rich country to maintain crude output.
The deals were inked Sunday with Prime Minister Mustafa Al-Kadhimi in attendance, according to an Oil Ministry statement.
Total signed contracts with the ministry to develop the Ratawi oil field in southern Iraq, a gas processing hub to capture natural gas from five southern oil fields, and a much needed project to treat Gulf seawater and inject it into reservoirs to maintain oil production levels.
A fourth project was signed with the Electricity Ministry to build a 1,000 megawatt solar power plant.
It is the most lucrative and ambitious deal to be signed by an oil giant in Iraq in years and comes as other international oil companies have taken steps to exit from Iraq’s oil sector.
There was no immediate statement from Total.
Iraq urgently needs to develop local gas resources to meet electricity demands, especially during the peak summer months. The country is heavily reliant on Iranian gas and electricity imports, which have been irregular in recent months due to outstanding payments and high demand inside Iran.
In a June interview, Oil Minister Ihsan Abdul-Jabbar Ismail said he was aiming to increase Iraq’s gas capacity by 3 billion cubic standard feet by 2025. The development of the gas processing hub would bring Iraq a step closer to that goal. Iraq currently imports 2 billion cubic standard feet to meet domestic needs.
The project entails building a gas complex capable of separating and processing the natural gas associated with petroleum that is extracted from the Ratawi, West Qurna 2, Majnoon, Tuba and Luhais oil fields. Iraq currently lacks the means to capture this gas and it is burned off in the atmosphere. Experts complain that by not effectively capturing this natural gas, Iraq is wasting millions in revenue. Once processed, the gas can be fed to power plants to meet domestic electricity needs.
Iraq has said it plans to eliminate gas flaring in the next two to three years. The World Bank estimates Iraq flares around 16 billion cubic meters of gas per day.
But industry officials and technocrats inside the Oil Ministry said far more urgent for the wellbeing of Iraq’s oil industry was the seawater development component of the package of deals.
Oil is Iraq’s main industry and accounts for 90 percent of state revenues. To keep current production rates and meet future targets, water is reinjected into the field to maintain well pressure.
Officials say the signing of the deal was pushed ahead by Prime Minister Mustafa Al-Kadhimi ahead of national elections next month despite reservations from ministry technocrats who harbor doubts that Total is serious about executing the seawater element.
“The Oil Ministry and the (state-owned) Basra Oil Company have doubts that Total is serious about the seawater project. They think they will push for the oil field and gas hub projects and delay the rest,” said an industry official with knowledge of the contract negotiations. An official with BOC expressed the same concern. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to brief the press.
Industry and ministry officials have warned that adequate water supplies for reinjection is not guaranteed amid shortages and there is no other alternative in place.
The contracts with Total mirrors another multi-project deal that had been under negotiation for years with US oil giant ExxonMobil. But following years of painstaking talks the deal fell through.
The Total deal also comes as other oil companies plan their exit from Iraq. Exxon announced this year it would be selling its shares from West Qurna 1 oil field. The oil minister has also said that British Petroleum will spin off development of the Rumaila oil field, the country’s largest.
French giant signs mega deals with Iraq for oil, gas, water
https://arab.news/8eufz
French giant signs mega deals with Iraq for oil, gas, water
- The deals were inked Sunday with Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi in attendance, according to an Oil Ministry statement
- Total signed contracts with the ministry to develop the Ratawi oil field in southern Iraq
Italian police fire tear gas as protesters clash near Winter Olympics hockey venue
- Police vans behind a temporary metal fence secured the road to the athletes’ village, but the protest veered away, continuing on a trajectory toward the Santagiulia venue
MILAN: Italian police fired tear gas and a water cannon at dozens of protesters who threw firecrackers and tried to access a highway near a Winter Olympics venue on Saturday.
The brief confrontation came at the end of a peaceful march by thousands against the environmental impact of the Games and the presence of US agents in Italy.
Police held off the violent demonstrators, who appeared to be trying to reach the Santagiulia Olympic ice hockey rink, after the skirmish. By then, the larger peaceful protest, including families with small children and students, had dispersed.
Earlier, a group of masked protesters had set off smoke bombs and firecrackers on a bridge overlooking a construction site about 800 meters (a half-mile) from the Olympic Village that’s housing around 1,500 athletes.
Police vans behind a temporary metal fence secured the road to the athletes’ village, but the protest veered away, continuing on a trajectory toward the Santagiulia venue. A heavy police presence guarded the entire route.
There was no indication that the protest and resulting road closure interfered with athletes’ transfers to their events, all on the outskirts of Milan.
The demonstration coincided with US Vice President JD Vance’s visit to Milan as head of the American delegation that attended the opening ceremony on Friday.
He and his family visited Leonardo da Vinci’s “The Last Supper” closer to the city center, far from the protest, which also was against the deployment of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to provide security to the US delegation.
US Homeland Security Investigations, an ICE unit that focuses on cross-border crimes, frequently sends its officers to overseas events like the Olympics to assist with security. The ICE arm at the forefront of the immigration crackdown in the US is known as Enforcement and Removal Operations, and there is no indication its officers are being sent to Italy.
At the larger, peaceful demonstration, which police said numbered 10,000, people carried cardboard cutouts to represent trees felled to build the new bobsled run in Cortina. A group of dancers performed to beating drums. Music blasted from a truck leading the march, one a profanity-laced anti-ICE anthem.
“Let’s take back the cities and free the mountains,” read a banner by a group calling itself the Unsustainable Olympic Committee. Another group called the Association of Proletariat Excursionists organized the cutout trees.
“They bypassed the laws that usually are needed for major infrastructure project, citing urgency for the Games,” said protester Guido Maffioli, who expressed concern that the private entity organizing the Games would eventually pass on debt to Italian taxpayers.
Homemade signs read “Get out of the Games: Genocide States, Fascist Police and Polluting Sponsors,” the final one a reference to fossil fuel companies that are sponsors of the Games. One woman carried an artificial tree on her back decorated with the sign: “Infernal Olympics.”
The demonstration followed another last week when hundreds protested the deployment of ICE agents.
Like last week, demonstrators Saturday said they were opposed to ICE agents’ presence, despite official statements that a small number of agents from an investigative arm would be present in US diplomatic territory, and not operational on the streets.
