The initial development plan agreed by Royal Dutch Shell, Malaysian partner Petronas and Iraqi oil officials includes inviting oil service firms to drill 15 new wells, an Iraqi oil official said recently.
p>The initial development plan agreed by Royal Dutch Shell, Malaysian partner Petronas and Iraqi oil officials includes inviting oil service firms to drill 15 new wells, an Iraqi oil official said recently.
The plan also includes building two new crude processing plants with a capacity of 50,000 barrels per day each and boosting capacity at an existing processor to 120,000 bpd from 100,000 bpd, the official said.
The plan was put together at a meeting in the southern oil hub of Basra by officials from Iraq's South Oil Company (SOC) and executives of Shell and state-run Petronas. The two companies won the right to develop the 12.6 billion barrel Majnoon oilfield, one of the world's biggest, in the second auction held by Iraq last year of oilfield development contracts, and the contract was signed early this year.
It is one of 10 oilfield development deals that could take Iraq to third place among oil producing nations from 11th now and boost its capacity to Saudi levels of 12 million barrels per day from around 2.5m bpd currently.
"We discussed preliminary plans to raise the output in the Majnoon oilfield and if everything goes according to the plan, an output of 175,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day could be achieved in 24 months," said the SOC oil official.
The SOC nominated Abdul Sahib Qutub, a former deputy oil minister and current adviser to Oil Minister Hussain Al Shahristani, to head the Majnoon joint management committee, the official said. Meanwhile, China National Petroleum Company (CNPC), the country’s top oil producer, aims to boost output at a giant Iraqi oilfield by at least 10 per cent this year. CNPC and BP signed a deal with Iraq to almost triple production at the Rumaila field over the next six to seven years. The consortium should take over will take over work at the oilfield by June 30th.
