THE Iraqi Oil Thread pt 2 (merged)

[yesplease]

The sooner it's all gone, the better, as far as I'm concerned.

Given the huge external costs of autos alone, I can't say I agree.

[TheDude]

Check it out - oil everywhere!

Like Santa Clara County, CA:



Tons Of Oil Seep Into The Gulf Of Mexico Each Year - iReport.com

Seeps and Oil Exploration

Oil Seep at McKittrick, California

This last depicts all of the same phenomena they're encountering in Kurdistan.

[OilFinder2]

^
Now all it needs is some trapped saber-tooth tigers and wooley mammoths.

[mattduke]

Richard is going into the Iraqi oil business.

link

[Cashmere]

A Zionist, neocon, Jewish businessman who pushed for war with Iraq on every pretext other than oil now wants to profit from Iraqi oil?

Will wonders never cease?

Next thing you know, an Evangelist will be caught stealing from his flock.

A black hooligan will be caught popping a cap in somebody's ass.

GW will stumble over his words.

Al Gore will propose blotting out a portion of the sun to reduce global warming.

Spears/Lohan/Hilton will flash a pussy.

A pit bull will maul somebody.

A priest will abuse an altar boy.

And yes folks, you guessed it . . .

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Wait for it . . .

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A bear will sh-t in the woods and the Pope will be Catholic.

[Starvid]

Perle has very strong personal contacts with Turkey, and loves that country.

[eastbay]

Perle has very strong personal contacts with Turkey, and loves that country.

Yup, too bad that friendship, love, and loyalty wasn't directed to the US.

[Graeme]

Iraq to resume oil exploration after 20 year pause

Iraq will resume searching for oil on Friday for the first time in two decades, the oil ministry said on Thursday, in the hope of finding vast reserves that lay undiscovered because of sanctions and war.

Iraq has 115 billion barrels of proven oil reserves, the third largest in the world, but the government believes the country's actual oil reserves may be three times as high.

guardian

[americandream]

Iraq to resume oil exploration after 20 year pause

Iraq will resume searching for oil on Friday for the first time in two decades, the oil ministry said on Thursday, in the hope of finding vast reserves that lay undiscovered because of sanctions and war.

Iraq has 115 billion barrels of proven oil reserves, the third largest in the world, but the government believes the country's actual oil reserves may be three times as high.

guardian

I wonder whether Saddam was aware of oil's peaking profile and left the oil in the ground for future generations of Iraqi children. Oh well, we can all drive down Queen Street in years to come in our fancy 4X4's at discounted oil prices and to hell with these kids inalienable rights to enjoy what was theirs.

[pedalling_faster]

Wow. that's an f'load of oil. no wonder Cheney wanted to invade the country (twice, first as defense sec. & then as VP)

i read somewhere that Iraq has about 2000 wells and that Texas has about 1 million, that is, Texas is much more thoroughly explored.

'3 times as high' - 345 billion barrels ? & Iraqi oil if i remember correctly is really easy to refine, i.e. it costs about $1 a barrel to refine (somehow that doesn't seem right - anybody got a better number ?)

no wonder bubbleChimp said, "F--- Saddam ! We're taking him out !"

i did wonder if Iraq, with so many fewer wells, would have more oil in the "discovered reserves" category, eventually, like, an extra 10-15 billion barrels.

but an extra 230 f'ing billion barrels ! of OIL - at $100+ a barrel ?!

if this is real, why aren't people making a bigger deal of it ?

[Tanada]

Iraq having 115 billion barrels is just as much an illusion as Saudi Arabia having 270. Both created a chitload of paper barrels back inthe 80's and 90's and never looked back or took produced barrels off the books.

[OilFinder2]

Wow. that's an f'load of oil. no wonder Cheney wanted to invade the country (twice, first as defense sec. & then as VP)

i read somewhere that Iraq has about 2000 wells and that Texas has about 1 million, that is, Texas is much more thoroughly explored.

'3 times as high' - 345 billion barrels ? & Iraqi oil if i remember correctly is really easy to refine, i.e. it costs about $1 a barrel to refine (somehow that doesn't seem right - anybody got a better number ?)

no wonder bubbleChimp said, "F--- Saddam ! We're taking him out !"

i did wonder if Iraq, with so many fewer wells, would have more oil in the "discovered reserves" category, eventually, like, an extra 10-15 billion barrels.

but an extra 230 f'ing billion barrels ! of OIL - at $100+ a barrel ?!

if this is real, why aren't people making a bigger deal of it ?

Perhaps you missed this thread:
--> Iraq has ‘more crude oil’ than Saudi Arabia, says author <--

[3aidlillahi]

Rockman doesn't post on the weekends, but I think I know what he'd say to these numbers. "Probably reserves to a geologist only means there's not enough data to disprove me." Or something like that is how he's said it a few times.

So these "350 bln" figures aren't really accurate. They are just numbers being thrown around with nothing to really support or disprove it. We'll have to wait until we start actually drilling, which hasn't really happened in a long time in these areas.

[OilFinder2]

This article is about something else, but there's a passage in it which gives you an idea how much oil Iraq expects to be pumping in the future.

--> LINK <--

Iraq hopes to boost oil production to 4.5 million bpd by 2013 and 6 million bpd by 2018, Shahristani said.

[TheDude]

That's about 1 mb/d over their 1979 peak, about 2 mb/d over what they're pumping now, assuming there aren't major volumes of 'hot oil' being siphoned off as it is. There's 1.25 mb/d listed in megaprojects but that's all baked into the cake of overall global production, natch.

And the country's still unsettled. 10 killed in attacks on the 19th alone.

[OilFinder2]

Meanwhile . . .

Iraqi's are about to bid out some really big goodies.

--> LINK <--

Iraq to Tender Oil Fields in Second Licensing Round
by Hassan Hafidh
Dow Jones Newswires
Monday, September 29, 2008

Iraq is planning to announce this year a list of oil fields, mostly discovered but undeveloped, to be tendered in its second licensing round, Iraqi oil sources said Monday.

The fields expected to be included in second postwar bidding round are located in the southern, central and northern areas of Iraq.

Iraq's super giant fields of Majnoon, Bin Umar, Halfaya, Nassiriya and possibly West Qurna Phase II, all located in southern Iraq, and Qayiarah in the northern Mosul province are expected to be included in the second bidding round, they said.

Other fields under consideration by the ministry are Nur, al-Gharraf, Subba and Sindibad in southern Iraq. In the north, the ministry is planning to offer fields in Diyala province. In the center the fields expected to be announced for development include East Baghdad, Balad, and West Kifl, the sources said.

These fields are with estimated reserves of more than 40 billion barrels and a total production capacity of 3 million barrels a day, the sources, who are familiar with the Iraqi oil industry, told Dow Jones Newswires.

[...]

[TheDude]

PDF: 1 Geographical Distribution of Iraqi Oil Fields And Its Relation with the New Constitution, compiled by Iraqi "Petroleum Advisor" Kamil al-Mehaidi for George Soros's Iraqi Revenue Watch.

2. The fields that were discovered but are still undeveloped represent the
backbone of the future oil industry in the short and medium term. If these fields are
sufficiently developed in the next five years, they will add new production of about 3.5 to
4 million barrels per day. If the remaining production from the current producing fields
is added, Iraq’s production capacity will approximately reach 5.5 to 6 million barrels a
day. In case the provinces develop all their capacities, the production map will be as
shown in Tables 1 and 2, and total production from these fields will reach 5.4 million
barrels daily, plus what remains of current production.

This is from May 2006. Also this prediction for Kirkuk:

Kirkuk province has 6 fields, consisting of 4 that are productive, and 2 that are
unproductive and awaiting development. Existing oil reserves in that province are
estimated at about 13.5 billion barrels, including 12.3 billion barrels in the current fields,
and the remaining in new undeveloped fields. This means that oil reserves in Kirkuk
represent about 12% of total reserves, broken down at 7.5% in the Kirkuk field and 4.5%
in the other province’s fields. It should be pointed out that production at the Kirkuk field
started in 1934 and its accumulated production until now has attained 62% of the original
reserves existing in the field. That means that this super giant field is at the final stages
of its life and that its current daily production capacity, amounting to about 470,000
barrels daily, will plunge to about half of that ten years from now, and to less than
100,000 barrels a day twenty five years from now.

Kirkuk at GlobalSecurity.org. EIA says Kirkuk's production entirely goes to domestic consumption, which I notice is increasing ca. 40 kb/d each year. Kirkuk city is still a zone of strife, elections are being held elsewhere in the country but Kirkuk is still too violent.

Iraq ditches plans for no-bid oil contracts

The six no-bid deals were for work to increase Iraqi production from existing oilfields by half a million barrels a day — the same amount by which OPEC countries agreed on Tuesday to reduce their output.

After cancelling the deals, Iraq reduced its goal of producing 2.9 million barrels a day by the end of the year by 200,000 barrels.

Preliminary figures for 2007 are 20.93 mb/d and only new contribution this year is Tawke's 50 kb/d so this would indicate a major overhaul of existing production. They would also suggest that production levels were really at ca. 2.4 mb/d.

[OilFinder2]

^
Thanks for the link. If I worked for an oil company, I'd be just drooling over some of this stuff:

It should be mentioned that exploration operations are still under way in Iraq. When they are completed the provinces’ oil and gas wealth distribution map may radically change. However, the position of Basra will most likely remain at the forefront. In addition, there are studies that indicate that the provinces in which oil has not been discovered until now have solid oil and gas prospects, especially in the case of the two provinces of Anbar and Mosul.

Geological studies have shown that Iraq has about 530 geological structures with good oil prospects. Only about one-fourth of these have been drilled until now, and the remaining ones are still pending. It is thus expected that many other joint fields, straddling provinces, will be discovered.

[OilFinder2]

Looks like someone at The Oil Drum has finally started to see the light.

--> TOD Downunder <--
Cut to the highlights:

[...]

The subject of Iraqi oil is one which has fascinated me for a number of years, so in this post I'll outline why I believe that Iraq probably has the world's largest oil reserves - or, as Daniel Yergin once said of the middle east, it is "the greatest single prize in all history"

[...]

Conclusion

As we frequently find elsewhere, there is very little in the way of transparent data regarding Iraq's oil reserves, so many interpretations of what is going on seem to be basically political in nature.

However, given the history of Iraq's oil industry and its largely undeveloped state (even when considering well known reserves), I think some of the higher estimates for Iraq's oil reserves are likely true. The oil that could be extracted will have much lower extraction costs, assuming the security situation can be fixed, than anywhere else - its entirely possible that if Iraq's oil industry had developed unhindered in the past, high cost oil developments like Canadian tar sands projects might still be in the planning stages, and only justifiable on energy security grounds.

The Iraq Oil Ministry is continuing trying to get the oil law passed, and predicting potential production in the 10 million barrel per day range (even the limited sell off supposedly under consideration could result in an increase in production to 4.5 million barrels per day, according to the Wall Street Journal).

[...]

[JustaGirl]

Too bad the IEA is predicting we will need 4 new SA's just to stand still. So possibly 1 down, where will we find the other 3?