The Government Intends To Proceed With A New Licensing Round For Iraqi Gas.. What Will It Add?, 20 OCT

 The Government Intends To Proceed With A New Licensing Round For Iraqi Gas.. What Will It Add?

Posted On 2024-10-18 By Sotaliraq   The government is planning two new rounds of licensing in the energy sector, with the aim of stopping gas flaring and achieving self-sufficiency to operate power plants that are experiencing an increasing need for fuel, in light of the challenges of Iranian gas outages, financial payment problems due to US sanctions, and the increasing demand for energy.

Last August, the Council of Ministers approved the contracts for the fifth and sixth supplementary licensing rounds, amounting to 14 projects for final signing and direct activation.

Member of the Parliamentary Oil and Gas Committee, MP Basem Al-Gharibawi, said, “The coming period will witness a fifth licensing round, most of which will be granted to border oil and gas fields, while the sixth round will focus largely on gas fields.”

Al-Gharibawi added, “There are 15 fields, most of which are in the western region, that have not been referred to any party during the previous two rounds, and thus more than one new round may be held in order to refer them for investment, due to Iraq’s urgent need to invest in gas due to the problems of electricity that depends on Iranian gas, which is cut off due to Tehran’s need for it at times, and at other times due to the inability to pay the debts resulting from the US sanctions imposed on it.”

He explains the reasons for the government’s move towards investing in gas, with “the renewed urgent need for it as a result of the scarcity of Iranian gas during peak times, which prompts the Ministry of Oil to use kerosene fuel oil as an alternative, which created a crisis at gas stations for vehicles,” noting that “the Ministry of Oil is ultimately making efforts to market the remaining gas fields to international companies through the Minister’s travels to the United States and European countries, during which he extended invitations to companies.”

The member of the parliamentary committee continues, “The targeted governorates in the upcoming licensing rounds are the governorates of western Iraq that were not included in the rounds by submitting applications for their fields, so they remain without referral, and efforts during the coming period are focused on the necessity of referring them and investing them in the best possible way.”

The fifth and sixth supplementary rounds were launched in Baghdad between May 11-13, in the presence of Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani, where 22 companies from all over the world competed for them, including no American company, while Chinese companies and one Iraqi company won their contracts, with different profit percentages after investment expenses that reached 30 percent.

It is noteworthy that Iraq is distinguished by its location among the most important strategic regions in the global oil and gas industry, due to its important strategic geography and huge reserves of natural resources, which provide it with distinct opportunities for investment and development in this vital sector.

For his part, academic and oil specialist, Govind Sherwani, believes that “what remains of the fifth and sixth licensing rounds are 15 investment opportunities, including 10 gas exploration blocks that were presented by the government delegation that recently visited the United States of America to major American companies,”

 indicating that “the new rounds will focus largely on investing in natural gas, which has not received the attention it deserves for two decades, despite being a huge wealth that is equal to oil in its industrial importance and the fields of energy and fertilizers, and Iraq has a large reserve of it, as the reserve is estimated at 143 trillion cubic feet, and a lot of free gas is still not invested, and the associated gas continues to be burned in the oil fields, which is a wealth estimated at millions of dollars that is being wasted.”

Sherwani criticizes the previous rounds’ focus on “oil, and the lack of interest in gas and its huge reserves, which place Iraq in 13th place in the world, so it continues to burn and waste despite all the efforts of the Ministry of Oil to invest 65 percent of it, and the remaining 35 percent is burned at a time when it should be fully exploited to stop imports from Iran or distant Asian countries,” explaining that “the total investment in gas will make Iraq self-sufficient within four to five years, after which the surplus will be exported to Western European markets, which have been cut off from natural gas, causing its prices to rise three or four times as much as a result of the Russian-Ukrainian war.”

He attributes the delay in referring these oil and gas fields so far to “the fact that they are less attractive than their predecessors, due to the lack of full security of the border areas, in addition to the lack of infrastructure in some of them, such as transportation lines and logistics, or the fact that they are not promising large quantities of gas and oil, because each company receives a bag of information about the investment opportunity to study it before submitting its offers.”

He points out that “the ministry adopted, in the two previous rounds, a new formula for contracting with investors, represented by profit sharing, and not through previously approved service contracts, which may achieve greater profits and benefits for companies in the event of a rise in global oil prices.

Therefore, the ministry’s introduction of this system in the licensing rounds came to strengthen the methods of attracting companies, which led to a local company also obtaining two or three investment areas, which means that some local companies have reached advanced levels in investing in oil projects.”

The academic specializing in oil notes that “the ministry has not yet succeeded in resolving the issue of exporting oil from the Kurdistan Region, despite a year and a half having passed since the suspension, in the absence of technical, financial and administrative solutions with the Ministry of Wealth in the region and foreign companies working in production and transportation, which has led to significant damage exceeding $16 billion so far at a time when it can be invested as a useful outlet for oil with the instability of oil shipments through the Red Sea and Suez to importers in Western Europe and North America.”

“The Turkish port of Ceyhan can be the best option for exporting Iraqi oil to these western regions. Its importance lies in increasing export outlets to Iraq to avoid any crises that may occur in other export regions, which means the continuation of exports with stability and complete security at all times,” he added.

It is noteworthy that Iraq took six years to prepare for the licensing round that was held in the middle of this year 2024 after conducting several workshops for companies and reviewing the type of contracts by changing the percentage of ownership and the companies’ share of the profits from investments in these fields.

Oil Minister Hayan Abdul Ghani had anticipated the licensing round by expecting that the investments in the two licensing rounds would increase by up to three billion cubic feet of gas, contributing to putting an end to the chronic energy problem.

For his part, academic and energy researcher Bilal Khalifa explained that “the delay in not exploiting the fields that were not referred in the fifth and sixth rounds is a loss, because the companies that operate these fields in the previous rounds have begun to extract oil without exporting it from them,” indicating that “two of the six fields, namely Anjana-Khashm Ahmar and Kalabat-Kamar, are gas fields, and Iraq is in great need of gas.”

Khalifa explains that “four of the six fields, which are border fields, are considered oil fields, and their exploitation by investment companies must be accompanied by exports from the fields.

Otherwise, Iraq will pay profitable fees despite not exporting oil if OPEC does not raise Iraq’s share, which amounts to about four million and 400 thousand with the region,” noting that “Iraq signed the licensing contracts in 2009 and now 14 years have passed, and it is supposed to have sufficient experience now in managing the fields with the professionalism of foreign companies.”

He notes that “if it is not possible to allocate funds from the federal general budget, it can resort to borrowing as international oil companies do to avoid the great waste of public money, especially since the Ministry of Oil announced about a month ago the establishment of the Oil Services Company, and it would have been better to put among its first tasks the management and operation of those fields.”

He added, “The Emirati Crescent Company, which recently won three contracts, also has contracts in the region, which violate the constitution, while the Federal Court previously ruled that the government should not deal with any company that has dealings or contracts with the region. As for the Chinese company Geojiad, it is small and unknown,” calling for “dispensing with companies from neighboring countries, because it involves caveats, and replacing them with international companies.”

Khalifa advises that “the Ministry of Oil should take the middle path of expediting the exploitation and operation of these border and gas fields for the reasons explained above, but not with foreign companies, but with national effort, while giving the operating authority for these fields broad powers like the powers of foreign companies and freeing it from the restrictions of instructions and controls.”

He points out that “the recent licensing rounds failed to refer the gas fields, just as they failed to refer the border fields, in light of Iraq’s inability to meet the needs of its power stations for generation,” stressing “the need to limit the upcoming rounds to gas only, otherwise they will be useless. Iraq’s offshore fields should also be included with the Gulf because the parties adjacent to them are exploiting them without benefit to Iraq.”

He points out that “the world is moving towards renewable and clean energy, and estimates say that the use of oil will decrease after 2060, and therefore we need to exploit oil before its value decreases, at a time when Iraq needs more revenues, and its economy is rentier and depends on oil revenues.”

Regarding the negatives of the licensing rounds, he believes that “the current government’s statement in announcing the imminent celebration of the signing of the fifth licensing round contracts is for gas, and it would have been better to pay attention to the fields of the third licensing round, especially the Akkas gas field, whose production is greater than the two gas fields combined, to be an alternative to extending a gas pipeline from Baghdad to Anbar, and the loss would be doubled.”

It is noteworthy that the oil sector’s imports represent more than 94 percent of Iraq’s GDP, which is the second largest country in burning natural gas in the world after Russia, with losses estimated by the government at about six billion dollars annually, as the Sudanese Prime Minister is counting, during the launch of the latest licensing, on the country obtaining about 3,460 million standard cubic feet of gas and more than one million barrels of oil per day, in addition to increasing investments in the targeted governorates.  LINK