Azerbaijan, Baku, Aug. 26 / Trend , A.Badalova/
The Turkish TPAO intends, along with other large world companies, to participate in a tender for the development of oil fields in Iraq. This week, Turkish Energy and Natural Resources Minister, Taner Yildiz, has said at a meeting with Iraqi Oil Minister Hussain al-Shahristani that TPAO can take part in 10 tenders to develop Iraq's oil and gas fields, which will be held in late 2009. A total of 14 contract areas with reserves of 41 billion barrels of oil equivalent have been put up for competition. The type of reserves has not been specified.
Reuters, reporting on the competition, says that the Iraqi Government wants to get $1.2 billion in bonus payments in signing the contracts. The type of contract has not been divulged. It is assumed that the bonus for each contract will amount to $100-150 million. At the same time, Iraq will get a quarter of the equity in all projects. Applicants, says Bloomberg, may form a consortium to participate in the tender, but each participant's share must be at least 10 percent, and an application can be submitted on four lots maximum.
In total, 45 foreign companies, including Russia's Gazprom and Lukoil, are participating in the second international tender.
The winners of the first international competition in June, in which 30 foreign companies participated, became Britain's BP and China's CNPC, who received the right to develop Iraq's largest oil field, Rumaila.
Earlier, the President and CEO of TPAO, Mehmet Uysal, said in an interview that the company intends to be engaged in production in Iraq, Iran and Turkmenistan. At present the majority of TPAO's production - 35,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day (43 percent of total production) - is from the Azerbaijani Shah-Deniz oilfield and the block of the Azeri-Chirag-Guneshli fields, operated by BP. The total volume of TPAO's oil and gas production is 80,000 barrels of oil per day.
Iraq now ranks second in the world in terms of oil reserves and ninth in natural gas reserves. According to BP, the Iraq's proven gas reserves amounted to 3.17 trillion cubic meters at the beginning of the year.
Besides Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan, Iraq is considered as a gas supplier for the Nabucco pipeline, designed to transport oil from the Caspian region and the Middle East to the EU.
According to the Iraqi Oil Minister, the country will be able to supply gas to the Nabucco pipeline, if it produces more than it requires at present. "The development of gas fields will take around five or six years," said al-Shahristani. "After their development, Iraq will have much more gas than it needs, definitely enough for export."
In addition, earlier in July, at the signing ceremony of the intergovernmental agreement on the construction of the Nabucco gas pipeline, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki said that the country could supply 15 billion cubic meters of gas a year for the planned pipeline.
As part of the Nabucco pipeline, Iraqi gas can be transported to EU countries via the new planned pipeline to Turkey, which will be built parallel to the existing Kirkuk-Ceyhan pipeline.
The talks between Ankara and Baghdad on the construction of the gas pipeline, which started in 1996, still continue.
The length of the gas pipeline from Iraq to Turkey is 1,380 kilometers, its cost is $2.5 billion, and its capacity is 10 billion cubic meters.
The construction of the pipeline is expected to begin in 2011 and the first supplies are to start in 2014. Its maximum capacity will be 31 billion cubic meters per year. Nabucco shareholders are the Austrian OMV, Hungarian MOL, Bulgarian Bulgargaz, Romanian Transgaz, Turkish Botas and German RWE with 16.67 percent each.
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