Winners of Gas-Field Contracts Announced - Full Details

The winners of the three fields have been announced as follows:

• Akkas, near the Syrian border, is the largest of the three fields at 158bn cubic metres, and it went to a joint South Korean-Kazakh bid from the Korean Gas Corporation [Kogas] and Kazakhstan company KazMunaiGas. They will produce 400 million standard cubic feet of gas a day at a price of $5.50 per barrel of oil equivalent.
• The Mansuriyah field in the volatile Diyala province in central Iraq, which stretches east to the Iranian border, has been won by Korean Gas Corporation [Kogas], Turkey's TPAO and Kuwait Energy. It holds around 127bn cubic metres of gas. They committed to produce 320 million standard cubic feet of gas a day for $7 per barrel of oil equivalent produced, the maximum the government would agree to pay.
• Siba, on the Kuwaiti border south of Basra, is by far the smallest of the three fields at only 2.9bn cubic metres. Kuwait Energy and TPAO won the bidding here, agreeing to produce 100 million standard cubic feet of gas a day at a price of $7.50 per barrel of oil equivalent.

A dispute with the authorities in Anbar province threatens to cause problems for the Akkas deal.

(Sources: Guardian, Bloomberg, Aswat al-Iraq)