By John Lee. Zawya reports that Iraq’s government will invite international tenders for the Middle Euphrates Airport in Karbala before the end of December this year. Dr Abbas Hassani, the head of the Construction and Strategic Planning Committee in the provincial council, said: "Aeroports de Paris Ingenierie (ADPi) has completed the design, which cost $42m. […]
Izumi Kobayashi, Executive Vice President of the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA) -- the political risk insurance arm of the World Bank Group -- will visit Iraq, Jordan, and the West Bank and Gaza in early November. During her visit, she will discuss opportunities for private sector investment and raise awareness of how MIGA's investment […]
Officials from the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) recently visited Iraq to train a group of 22 students from the Iraq Civil Aviation Authority (ICAA) and Iraq’s Department of the Air Force on aviation accident investigations. The training took place from October 14 to 18 at Iraq’s Aviation Training Institute and supported Iraq’s efforts […]
Romanian Foreign Minister Titus Corlăţean concluded an official visit to the Kurdistan Region yesterday in which he met with KRG Prime Minister Nechirvan Barzani and officially opened the Consular Office of the Romanian Embassy in Erbil. The Foreign Minister expressed admiration for the political and economic developments in the Kurdistan Region and said that the […]
By John Lee. Iraq has signed a final contract with Pakistan Petroleum Limited (PPL), giving it the right to explore gas Block 8, covering an area of 6,000 sq km in the Diyala and Wassit provinces in eastern Iraq. During the signing ceremony, Iraq's deputy oil minister, Ahmed al-Shamma, said "developing exploration block 8 could […]
By John Lee. The Norwegian oil producer DNO International expects the Kurdistan Regional Government to pay the company part of the money it’s owed for exports by the end of the year. In September, Baghdad agreed to pay international companies 1 trillion Iraqi dinars ($858 million) and the KRG has received a first tranche of […]
By John Lee. Egyptian investment bank EFG Hermes is planning to expand into Turkey, Iraq and Libya, according to a report from Reuters. The company also plans to grow its asset management arm by 50 percent after the completion of its joint venture with Qatar's QInvest. QInvest will hold 60 per cent and EFG's holding […]
By John Lee. The yield on Iraqi bonds has fallen more than three times as much as the average Middle Eastern bond, reports Bloomberg. From the start of June to the end of October, the rate on 5.8 percent dollar-denominated Iraqi government bonds maturing in January 2028 has fallen by 216 basis points to 6.48 […]
By John Lee. DNO International, the Norwegian oil and gas company, announced today that the Benenan-3 well drilled on its Erbil license, Kurdistan region of Iraq, encountered an additional 210 meter oil column in the Najmeh reservoir which is expected to more than double the Benenan field's gross 2P oil-in-place volumes from 300 million barrels […]
By John Lee. In its operations update this morning, Petroceltic International issued the follow statement on its operation in Iraqi Kurdistan: Geophysical surveying operations at the Shakrok block (Petroceltic 16% working interest) were completed on 21 September 2012, with 276 kilometres of 2D seismic lines acquired. Drilling remains scheduled to commence on Shakrok in Q3 […]
By John Lee. The Ministry of Oil has allocated $4 billion for the construction of a new refinery in Karbala. According to a report from Azzaman, the 150,000-bpd refinery will take four years to complete and it will be built by Iraqi technicians and engineers under the supervision of a team of international experts. The […]
By John Lee. A federal magistrate in Oregon has ordered Kellogg Brown and Root (KBR) to pay $85 million to a dozen National Guard soldiers for illnesses suffered while guarding an oilfield water plant during the Iraq war. The soldiers said they suffer from respiratory ailments after exposure to sodium dichromate, and they fear that […]
