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)

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)

The head of Nineveh Investment Commission has said that a German company plans to develop German-style housing complexes in Mosul, 405 km north of Baghdad.

Muafaq Mahmud told AKnews that the German company Markina signed an investment contract with the investment board in Mosul and work is scheduled to begin on the housing complexes in July.

“Nineveh needs to build thousands of housing units to contribute to solving the housing crisis,” he said, adding that the project would “provide jobs for the unemployed”.

Nineveh Investment Commission announced earlier this year that contracts had been signed with British and Turkish companies for construction totaling 30,000 housing units in Mosul and Qayyarah.

(Source: AKnews)

The Chairman of Nineveh Council said this week that a preliminary agreement has been signed with a British company to plan the reconstruction of areas badly damaged by bombing in the Iraqi war.

Jaber Abed Rabbo told AKnews that the deal will ensure that the reconstruction of the province conforms to the latest standards of urban planning as well as providing extensive investment opportunities and the regeneration of the region.

“The company’s delegation was briefed on the requirements of the province’s cities during their visit today,” he said, adding that the projects will focus mainly on the badly damaged southern and western regions of the province.

Rabbo explained that the work is expected to begin in April.

Nineveh province and its capital Mosul, 405 km north of Baghdad, were badly damaged during the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq and the battles that ensued.

Almost daily acts of insurgent violence, mostly attributed to al-Qaeda and its affiliates, since the fall of the Saddam regime have placed the region second only to Baghdad in terms of security instability.

(Source: AKnews)