Kurds in Northern Iraq discover up to 65 billion barrels of reserves
Oil is about to come on line once again in Iraq, possibly in a big way.
On June 29 and 30, Iraqi officials are going to auction off oil contracts to foreign oil companies, with the aim of reviving production in six developed oil fields that have suffered from neglect since the Iraq war began in 2003.
At the same time, the Kurds in the northern Iraq semi-autonomous area known as Kurdistan have discovered an oil field containing as much as 3 to 4 billion barrels, in what may be the first of several discoveries that could yield the Kurds up to an estimated 65 billion barrels of oil reserves, according to Canada.com.
Iraq’s oil minister Hussain al-Shahristani at a press conference in Baghdad on June 10 hailed the start of oil exports from Kurdistan region as a move toward ending Iraq’s long-standing dispute with the Kurds, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Iraq has 115 billion barrels of oil reserves, independent of any oil found by the Kurds in the north of the country.
Foreign know-how is required to boost Iraqi oil production to the 4 to 5 million barrels a day level, from the 2.4 million barrels a day currently being produced.
The Wall Street Journal reported that just more than 20 of Iraq’s roughly 80 known oil fields have been fully or partially developed, and most production comes from just three giant fields – North and South Rumaila and Kirkuk.
A key advantage of Iraqi oil is that because it is relatively easy to extract, oil exploration and development in Iraq costs approximately $1.50 to $2.25 a barrel, compared with $20 in Canada’s Alberta tar sands.
Forbes has reported that more than 30 companies have reportedly already taken part in the bidding, including BP and Exxon Mobil.
The oil contracts are likely to be extremely lucrative to both Iraq and Kurdistan.
Shahristani told the Iraqi parliament that the oil contracts would bring Iraq $1.7 trillion over 20 years, according to a report in The Guardian.
The Kurds are striking their own independent deals with private firms that include Norway’s DNO International, Swiss-Canadian Addax Petroleum Corporation and Turkey’s Gen. Enerji.
Kurdistan expects to export 100,000 barrels of oil a day, with the expectation that exports could reach one million barrels by late 2012, as reported by the Globe and Mail.
The prospect of developing oil resources in Iraq and Kurdistan is exciting because oil resources in both are under-explored and under-developed.
Conceivably, Iraq and Kurdistan together will become ranked in the next few years as holding the world’s third-largest oil reserves.
Opening Iraq’s oil reserves to foreign corporations is certain to restart the debate that has simmered since 2003, namely, that the whole point of the Iraq war was to allow Western oil companies to grab Iraq’s abundant reserves.
That argument, typically advanced by socialists or communists whose world view presumes corporate exploitation drives global politics, is largely ideological and unlikely ever to be refuted to the satisfaction of its proponents.
More importantly, the opening of the Iraq and Kurdistan oil reserves drives yet another blow to “peak oil” theorists who typically argue that the world is already at the point of oil depletion, such that rates of production are certain to decline.
In sharp contrast, Red Alert has consistently argued that world oil reserves are expanding, such that reserves are larger today than at any previous point in recorded history, despite world oil production nearly doubling since the 1970s.
About your guest:
Jerome R. Corsi is a staff reporter for WND. He received a Ph.D. from Harvard University in political science in 1972 and has written many books and articles, including his best-sellers “The Obama Nation” and “The Late Great USA.” Other books include “Showdown with Nuclear Iran,” “Black Gold Stranglehold: The Myth of Scarcity and the Politics of Oil,” which he co-authored with WND columnist Craig. R. Smith, and “Atomic Iran.”
About Red Alert:
Jerome Corsi’s RED ALERT is your weekly, global financial strategies newsletter. Designed to be your guide to economic trends in the best of times and the worst of times, it is edited by New York Times best-selling author Jerome Corsi, a WND staff writer and columnist. For 25 years, Corsi worked with banks throughout the U.S. and the world developing financial services marketing companies to assist banks in establishing broker/dealers and insurance subsidiaries to provide financial planning products and services to their retail customers. Corsi developed three third-party financial services marketing firms that reached annual gross sales levels of $1 billion in annuities and equal volume in mutual funds. Corsi received his Ph.D. in political science from Harvard University in 1972.