Economist: neglected oil fields surprise investment companies
Saturday, April 3rd 2010 5:00 PM
Baghdad, Apr. 3 (AKnews) A senior Iraqi economic expert said Saturday that Shell Oil Company would be unable to extract 175 thousand barrels of crude oil per day from the Majnoon field by 2012 due to the technical problems in the field.
al-Fakka Oil1
Khalil Ward said Saturday that Shell would be unable to develop the Majnoon oil production by 2012, which has been licensed by the Government of Iraq recently.
"Most of the international oil companies, particularly Shell and PETRONAS companies were surprised when seeing the reality of the neglected wells for a long time by the Ministry of Oil." Ward added.
Majnoon is one of the largest oil fields in the world and currently produces 45 thousand barrels of oil per day.
The field's final target output is 1.8 million barrels of oil per day.
Shell and PETRONAS won the contract for development of the oil field which is located south of Iraq with reserves estimated at about 12.6 billion barrels of oil.
The term of the contract is 20 years, one of several agreements concluded by Iraq in an attempt to rise to third place from its 11th position of the largest oil-producing countries in the world.
ry AKnews
