AKnews reports that the German energy firm MBH has landed a $625 million contract to build five 100-MW power plants in Nineveh province.

The Iraqi electricity ministry announced the deal on Wednesday, saying that the project is expected to be completed in 21 months.

The establishment of the plants is part of the government’s plan to plug national grid shortages – a central gripe in the nationwide wave of public protests earlier this year – which leave some provinces with just eight hours of national power per day.

According to AKnews, the Electricity Ministry spokesman Mosaab al-Muhandis said that the company will be paid in full one year after the completion of the project, while AFP reports that payment will begin one year after commissioning and will be spread over two years.

(Sources: AKnews, AFP)

Nineveh signed more reconstruction project contracts with international firms in the past financial year than any other Iraqi province, said the provincial governor on Sunday.

Athiel al-Nujaifi told AKnews that a total of 44 companies from around the have undertaken major reconstruction projects in the province in the fields of tourism, industry, public services and housing.

“These contracts with international companies will encourage a lot of Iraqi firms to participate in the reconstruction with them, thus improving their workforce skills and contributing to the development of the province,” he said.

“Some of these projects are almost complete,” Nujaifi continued, “…the most prominent are the construction of residential complexes, hotels, leisure facilities and shopping malls”.

The companies contracted come from Germany, Turkey, Italy, Korea, Japan, Syria, India, and Britain, he explained.

“Nineveh province registered the largest percentage of contracts signed with international companies compared to the other Iraqi provinces in 2010-2011”.

Attracting such a large number of global firms to the oil-rich province has been no mean feat. Nineveh province and its capital Mosul have been a hot bed of insurgent activity since the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq.

Despite extensive efforts to curb violence in the territorially-disputed province, Nineveh remains a stronghold of Sunnite militant groups and witnesses daily scenes of insurgent violence.

(Source: AKnews)

A Turkish company has been contracted to set up four new power stations in Nineveh province at an overall cost of $200 million [240 billion Iraqi dinars], a provincial energy official has announced.

Muhammed Wadallah al-Jabbouri from the Nineveh directorate of energy told AKnews that the Turkish firm Lanka has been given the task of supplying and installing the four 125 megawatt (MW) units in a bid to raise the generating capacity of the province for the summer season.

“The company will begin setting up the units this week,” Jabbouri said.

The four power generating units are in addition to a $267 million six-unit deal signed between the Nineveh energy directorate and Lanka in mid-February.

(Source: AKnews)

The local government in Ninewa signed a deal with a Turkish company on Wednesday to build a gas-fired electricity generating plant.

The plant will generate 750 Megawatts, a source from the Ninewa governor’s office told Aswat al-Iraq news agency.

“The $388 million-deal aims to improve the electricity in the province,” he noted.

(Source: Aswat al-Iraq)

Angolan oil company Sonangol started work on Thursday at the Najma [Najmah] and Qaiyara [Qaiyarah] oil fields in Ninewa, and it will start to dig wells in April, according to a report from Aswat al-Iraq.

In the second licensing round in 2009, Sonangol was the only company to submit bids for these fields. In both cases, the company reduced it’s remuneration fee after further negotiations.

Qaiyarah has a plateau production target of 120,000 barrels per day, with known reserves of 807 million barrels, while Najma has a target of 110,000.

(Sources: Aswat al-Iraq, Ministry of Oil)

[Update: The National Investment Commission (NIC) has issued a statement on 22nd March 2011 on behalf of the Chairman of the Nineveh Investment Commission, denying these reports of contracts signed with South Korean companies.]

The Chairman of the Nineveh Investment Commission said on Wednesday that it has signed investment contracts with 20 South Korean companies to build and rehabilitate the infrastructure in Mosul.

Mowaffaq al-Younis told AKnews that the board contracted with 20 South Korean companies specialising in electricity, sewerage, drainage, and the installation of drinking water supplies.

The infrastructure in Mosul suffered a marked decline over the past years as a result of military conflicts.

“We hope that these companies would start working next month … the Commission expects that investment in Nineveh in various public areas would be around U.S. $ 12 billion until the end of 2015.”

Korean companies have completed investment projects in Nineveh in 2010, including the reconstruction of Nineveh medicine laboratory (30 km north of Mosul), which was also equipped with modern Korean equipment, as well as establishing Wafah hospital for diabetes patients at a cost of 10 billion Iraqi Dinars.

(Source: AKnews)

Iraq is preparing to issue a tender for a $388.5 million power plant, according to a report from Bloomberg.

Ali Al-Dabbagh, a spokesman for the government, said on Tuesday that the Council of Ministers approved the plan to issue a tender for the plant in the Nineveh province, north of Baghdad.

The plant should be built within 21 months and generate 750 megawatts.

Iraq plans to almost triple power generation capacity to 17,000 megawatts by 2013, up from around 6,000 MW now, mostly through building new plants, an Electricity Ministry spokesman said in January.

Former Electricity Minister Karim Wahid quit in June amid violent street protests triggered by severe seasonal summer power shortages.

A bomb attack in the northern province of Nineveh halted oil flow through the Iraq-Turkey pipeline, which carries a quarter of Iraq’s crude exports, a spokesman for Iraq’s oil ministry said on Wednesday.

Reuters, quoting Oil Ministry spokesman Asim Jihad, reported that the attack occurred on Tuesday night, but oil flow is expected to resume in a “few days” after fixing the damage.

“A bomb attack … has led to an explosion in the pipeline. There was no fire only an oil leak so flow was halted,” Jihad said. “We have enough stocks in storage for exports.”

The pipeline has a capacity of 1.6 million barrels per day and typically pumps 500,000 bpd.

There remained some confusion as to whether the blast was the result of a bomb or a technical fault.

(Source: Reuters)