Iraq has qualified 41 companies to participate in its 4th energy bidding round, which is scheduled to take place in late January, Abdul-Mahdy al-Ameedi, director of the oil ministry's contracts and licensing directorate, told Reuters on Sunday. The 4th bidding round for the 12 new exploration blocs is expected to add 29 trillion cubic feet […]
Iraq's prime minister has fired his electricity minister, who is under investigation following allegations that he failed to follow government guidelines in the signing of $1.7 billion in power generation deals with two foreign companies. The minister Raad Shalal signed the deals in question with the Canadian Alliance for Power Generation Equipment (Capgent) and the […]
United Nations Secretary-General BAN Ki-moon today announced his intention to appoint Mr. Martin Kobler of Germany as his Special Representative for Iraq and Head of the United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI). He will replace Ad Melkert of the Netherlands who served in Iraq since July 2009. The Secretary-General is grateful for Mr. Melkert’s […]
According to reports from Reuters, the Korean giant STX Group has played down the possibility that its $2.76 billion power deal with the Iraqi government may collapse. Following report that STX was running out of time to secure a third party financial guarantor, the shipping-to-energy conglomerate says the contract does not mention a three-month deadline […]
Heritage Oil has announced that it has commenced drilling the Miran West-3 well in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq. Highlights The Miran West-3 well has commenced drilling with the primary objective of appraising the Miran West structure The well is targeting both the Jurassic and Cretaceous reservoir formations encountered in the Miran West-1 and Miran […]
Shares in ShaMaran Petroleum Corp were up 7% on Friday following the announcement of its financial and operating results for the second quarter of 2011 Highlights A major oil discovery in the Atrush Block was announced by the Company on April 13, 2011. The Atrush 1 well flowed at rates totalling over 6,393 bopd of […]
In Iraq almost all official records are kept on paper. So what better way to kill the paper trail that corruption investigators are tracking, than burn the evidence? A rash of fires inside government buildings has led to calls for further investigation. A recent rash of small fires inside the offices of various ministries and […]
According to a report from Rabee Securities, the Iraq Securities Commission (ISC) is suspending trading in the companies listed below, starting Monday, August 8th, 2011. The reason is their violation of instruction # (14) related to financial disclosure; their failure to submit their annual reports for 2010 and/or quarterly financial reports for first quarter 2011 […]
The following article was published by Reidar Visser, an historian of Iraq educated at the University of Oxford and currently based at the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs. It is reproduced here with the author’s permission. Any opinions expressed are those of the author, and do not necessarily reflect the views of Iraq Business News. […]
The capital of Iraqi Kurdistan is seeing a building boom, as developments go up at around the same rate as real-estate prices rise. Despite all the construction, though, the average citizen still can’t afford their own home. At times Erbil resembles a building site. Construction sites, both residential and commercial, dot the cityscape. Yet the […]
Shell Global Solutions has signed an agreement with the South Refineries Company of Iraq for the provision of technology licenses to a refinery in Basra, Southern Iraq. Shell Global Solutions will provide a license for a sulphur recovery unit and visbreaker unit as part of the agreement. Together with the refinery expansion, these technologies will […]
The Iraq Future Energy Conference will be hosted in Istanbul, Turkey, from 26th September to 29th September. There is a full programme to demonstrate how energy and infrastructure companies can take a piece of the projects worth tens of billions of US dollars. Attendees can learn about the Ministry of Oil's four-year plan ending in […]
