Iraqi Minister: Race for New Oil Fields

An Iraq at peace may be capable of pumping substantially more than 5 million barrels of crude a day – and the world’s big oil companies want to be part of the action if and when it does.

With violence down and production up, Iraq says output reached nearly 2.5 million barrels a day last month – about half the capacity eventually foreseen by many analysts. But Iraqis are even more bullish.
We expect to take Iraq to between 6 (million) and 8 million barrels a day … in about 10 to 12 years,” Oil Minister Hussein al-Shahristani told The Associated Press Friday on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum, saying most of the extra production would be coming from “green fields” identified but not yet exploited.

Such estimates are definitely on the high end. Still, the big oil companies appear to be believers in the future of Iraq as perhaps the Middle East’s last oil frontier – and are already trying to gain the best toehold in a contest that in part pits Russia’s state-linked sector against major players from the United States and Europe.

“All the majors and the minor oil companies have shown a great interest including the Russians, obviously,” al-Shahristani said as he took a break from meeting key figures in the industry for an interview in the lobby of his hotel at this Swiss Alpine resort. “They are all very keen to come and work in Iraq.”

Forbes