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By John Lee.

Iraq's Ministry of Electricity, in coordination with the National Investment Commission (NIC), have announced an investment opportunity to construct three solar power stations and one wind power station.

The plants will capacity of between 5 and 10 MW, and be situated in Diwaniya, Najaf and Missan (Maysan) provinces:

1. Diwaniya: A solar power station on a 50-donum site at Dagharah;
2. Diwaniya: A solar power station on a 50-to-60-donum site at Al- Suniyah;
3. Najaf : A solar power station on a 200-donum site at Al- Haideriyah;
4. Missan: A wind power station at Ali al- Gharbi.

Investors willing to invest in this opportunity should submit a letter of interest to the National Investment Commission by 13th May, providing a profile that contains the following:

• Project feasibility study that matches with the one arranged by the Ministry of Electricity (which can be obtained with the information confidentiality form when visiting NIC)
• Signing the information confidentiality form when visiting NIC
• Preliminary engineering plans
• Financial competency with the details of the project funding sources
• Duration and stages of project implementation
• Similar accomplished projects

The project will enjoy the following privileges:

• Tax and fees exemptions according to investment law provisions
• Ministry of Electricity, NIC and provincial governments shall undertake providing all facilitations to investor in order to obtain all licenses and approvals needed through the Ones Stop Shop in addition to providing facilitations during the implementation and operation stages
• The investor has the right to repatriate capitals, revenues and workers fees according to the CBI regulations after paying all financial dues.

For further information please contact:

• [email protected] –Attention: Mr. Ra’ad Qassem. Director General- Ministry of Electricity; or,
• [email protected]   National Investment commission,

(Source: National Investment Commission)

(Renewable Energy image via Shutterstock)

This article was originally published by Niqash. Any opinions expressed are those of the author, and do not necessarily reflect the views of Iraq Business News.

Kurdistan of the South? Basra Takes Further Steps Toward Independence Inside Iraq

Those who believe that the resource-rich province of Basra would be better off as a semi-autonomus region say the time is right to make this change. Others say any such project will endanger Iraq just when the country needs unity most.

The next few months will be crucial for one of Iraq's most resource-rich provinces. For some time now there have been calls to make the southern province of Basra a region – that is, it would become more independent from the federal government in Baghdad in a similar way to Iraqi Kurdistan.

“We have noticed that this idea is more widely accepted by social and tribal leaders who were against the plan in the past,” says politician, judge and legal expert, Wael Abdul-Latif, a former governor of Basra who's been campaigning for more independence for the province since 2008. “We have started to collect the votes of those who support the creation of a region of Basra. After this we will submit a request to the Independent High Electoral Commission.”

Now volunteers say they've already collected enough signatures to put forward a request to make Basra a region – and they say that they'll submit the proposal in mid-April.

To establish a region Article 119 of the Iraqi Constitution says certain steps must be taken – this involves either a tenth of all eligible voters in the province supporting the idea or one third of the provincial council members submitting the request. After this Iraq's Parliament decides whether to go ahead with turning a province into a more independent region with a vote.

And Basra has long been a candidate for this. In fact, the first request for regionalisation was submitted in 1921. “The rationale behind the petition was based on the economic and social characteristics of Basra, such as its having a seaport and economic vibrancy,” website Al Monitor reports.

By John Lee.

Karbala [Kerbala] governorate is reportedly planning to build an industrial city to attract local and foreign capital into the manufacturing sector.

The province's deputy governor, Jassim Al-Fatlawi, has said that an agreement has been signed with the Ministry of Industry to create the infrastructure.

Karbala’s government is to allocate the land for the project, while the Ministry will install the infrastructure, including roads, sewage, water and electricity.

(Source: Emirates 24|7)

By Ahmed Mousa Jiyad.

The Minister of Oil, Mr. Adil Abdul Mahdi, made a recent statement through which he highlighted three interrelated important issues:

• the first is that Iraq “lost $14,448,146,000” since 2011 up to the end of 2014 as “compensation” payment to IOCs;
• the second he referred to article 12.5 of the long term service contracts; and
• third he attributed this to “bad planning or due to obsolete instruction or measures”.

He then concluded by stating that “this is the real corruption.., and this is due to the real absence of planning and matured management” (http://www.alitthad.com/News_Details.php?ID=27986 (31 March 2015)

In my humble view the stated amount of paid compensation is so huge that neither legal premise nor actual production could justify it. Hence, there is something seriously wrong, suspicions and scandalous, as explained below.  

Let me take and address these three issues but in a reverse order.

Absence of sound planning and good follow-up

I fully agree with the Minister regarding the absence of good and sound planning, lacking of prudent resource management and prevalence of real corruption. I would even add further that the Ministry of Oil suffers from many serious and daunting skills and capacity gaps, especially with regards to development of upstream petroleum projects and their contracts.

There are ample examples and evidence in support of the above assertions especially post 2003 period. Moreover and without hesitation I could even argue that this unfortunate profile extends beyond the Ministry of Oil to the entire country on the macro-level whether that relates to the annual state budget, the four year national development plans or the Electricity Master Plan 2006-2015, or any other efforts at ministerial, sectoral and national levels.

In many of my documented contributions and interventions I had constantly criticized what I called the “Big-bush” strategy of the bid-rounds and highlighted the weaknesses or disadvantages (for Iraq) of the basic model of the long term service contracts-LTSC.

That said and based on a comparative analysis these LTSCs are better than PSCs and, thus, they do serve best “the highest interest of the Iraqi people” principle as enshrined in the Iraqi Constitution.

Therefore, the repeated recent attempts (by the Minsters of Oil and of Finance) to attributes all these shortcomings, malpractices and financial irregularities to the type of LTSC seems to be part of a concerted orchestrated campaign to advocates and lobby for PSCs contracts; and they (the two ministers) are only releasing testing balloons to measure the reaction to their calls for converting the federal ministry of oil LTSC to PSCs similar to those of the KRG; deliberately ignoring how disadvantageous those PSCs to KR economy.

Mitsubishi Hitachi Power Systems (MHPS) has received an order from the Ministry of Electricity (MOE) of Iraq for refurbishment of Unit 4 (output: 200 megawatts) at the Hartha Thermal Power Station.

The refurbishment work, scheduled for completion in May 2017, requires large-scale replacement of core components of the plant's seriously degraded power generation facilities. The project is being financed through a Japanese ODA (Overseas Development Assistance) loan extended to the Government of the Republic of Iraq.

The Hartha Thermal Power Station, which incorporates both gas- and oil-fired units, is located in the city of Basra in Iraq's south. The original power generation equipment was supplied by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Ltd. (MHI) in 1980, and for more than three decades it has played a vital role in providing power to the Basra region.

But after three wars the original facilities had sustained partial damage as well as gradual degradation, so that today Unit 4 is operating at only some 40 percent of its rated capacity. The newly ordered refurbishment work will restore the unit to its original rated output as a way of contribution to Iraq's recovery.

The rehabilitation project will consist of replacing Unit 4's core equipment - boilers, steam turbines and generators - plus introducing a state-of-the-art distributed control system (DCS).

These improvements will significantly enhance the plant's reliability. Installation and other work at the site will be performed by GAMA Power Systems Engineering and Contracting, Inc., an engineering firm headquartered in Turkey.

Besides MHI's earlier involvement in the Hartha Thermal Power Plant, Hitachi, Ltd. - MHI's partner in the integration of thermal power generation systems business that resulted in MHPS's founding - also has a long track record in Iraq, having taken part in refurbishment projects for MOE at thermal power stations in Taji, Al-Musaib and Mosul.

Through the newly ordered refurbishment work at the Hartha Thermal Power Plant, MHPS will make a further contribution to restoring Iraq's domestic power supply capability. Going forward, MHPS will continue to cooperate in achieving stable power supplies and enhancing generating efficiency, as a way of contribution to Iraq's economic and social recovery.

(Source: Mitsubishi Hitachi Power Systems)

By Wassim Bassem for Al-Monitor. Any opinions expressed are those of the author, and do not necessarily reflect the views of Iraq Business News.

Qasim al-Rubaie, a teacher from Babil province, told Al-Monitor in front of a grocery store, “You will not find any Iraqi grown vegetables and fruits. Instead you'll find imported goods from Jordan, Turkey, Iran and the Gulf countries.”

In fact, Iraqi agricultural products are not found in many local grocery stores, as if Iraq is no longer producing food products. The same applies to locally manufactured products, such as tissues, luxury items and drinks, which cannot be found in the markets. Yet, markets are overflowing with all sorts of imported goods.

This phenomenon is not new, according to Alaa Najm, a merchant. He told Al-Monitor, “The presence of domestic goods in the markets began to decline in the late 1980s. The reason for that was the former regime’s military expenditures. Then agricultural and industrial production decreased, and the government’s support for these sectors vanished, factories became obsolete and agricultural land reclamation projects no longer exist.”

Najm began traveling to China in 2003, along with hundreds of Iraqi retail and wholesale traders, to import goods at a cheap price. Because of the traders’ import activities, foreign products have become abundant on the Iraqi market, in the absence of mechanisms to protect local production, obsolete production techniques and an unimplemented customs tariff law on imported goods.

In an interview with Al-Monitor, Maytham Elaibi, an economist and academic researcher at the University of Baghdad, said that the major collapse in the domestic production of goods is attributed to “the economic policies that have failed to support factories and farm owners in making their products profitable.”

Elaibi said, “The low salaries have prompted workers to move from the private to the public sector, which increased disguised unemployment, which is unproductive.”

By Amberin Zaman for Al-Monitor. Any opinions expressed are those of the author, and do not necessarily reflect the views of Iraq Business News.

As the battle grinds on against the Islamic State — also known as IS, ISIL and Daesh — there is growing concern about the mounting influence of Iran and Shiite militias known as the Popular Mobilization Units (PMU) inside Iraq.

The Iraqi Kurds, who continue to clash with the Shiite-led government in Baghdad over the sharing of oil revenues, are feeling squeezed. Nechirvan Barzani, the savvy young prime minister of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), has played a central role in maintaining the precarious balance between his people, the central government and the big regional powers, Turkey and Iran.

The United States has re-emerged as the Kurds’ principal ally in the battle against the jihadists. As the battle to liberate Mosul from IS looms, what are the challenges that lie ahead? Nechirvan Barzani explains in an interview with Al-Monitor in Erbil, the capital of the KRG.

Al-Monitor: How is the battle against Daesh [IS] going?

Barzani: It was a big shock in the beginning. But since then it seems we have been able to push them back from the Kurdistan territories, from the areas surrounding Kirkuk, Zumar, Rabia, Mosul Dam, Makhmour and Gwer. These regions have been liberated. The initiative is back in our hands now. We feel that they don’t have the same strength to mount fresh attacks. In general the situation is much better. But the danger has obviously not subsided altogether and so long as Mosul remains in the hands of ISIL the threat will remain.

Al-Monitor: I will get to Mosul, but first I would like to discuss the role of Iran and the Shiite militias or the Popular Mobilization Units, the PMUs. Throughout my stay here, Kurds and Western officials alike have aired more worries about Iran and the PMU than about the Islamic State, or Daesh.

Barzani:  There is a reality that needs to be addressed. When ISIL first embarked on this war in Iraq, Iran was one of the first countries that came forward to defend Iraq, including Kurdistan. It was felt there was a common enemy, Daesh. And the other bitter reality was that the Iraqi army did not possess the means to stop the onslaught of ISIL. As a result of a fatwa from Ayatollah [Ali] Sistani, Hashid Shaabi, or the Popular Mobilization Units, were formed. It would be unfair to deny the positive contribution of these forces to help push back ISIL. In many places they have played a positive role.

By Luay Al-Khatteeb and Harry Istepanian, of the Brookings Institution.

The need to confront and drive back the forces of the Islamic State (IS, ISIS. ISIL) has pushed long-term reform efforts in Iraq far down the list of priorities.

Yet pressing economic reforms – such as restructuring and rebuilding the country’s energy sector – increasingly seem a strategic necessity, as oil prices have fallen far below government projections.

How can politicians be persuaded to invest in Iraq’s long-term future at a time of imminent security threats? How can the efforts to reform the Iraqi electricity network be harnessed to reestablish government authority in newly retaken areas?

Luay Al-Khatteeb and Harry Istepanian address these questions through analysis of past attempts at electricity sector reform. They argue that even before IS advances plunged Iraq into a deep political and security crisis, divisions within the Iraqi parliament and various government agencies had stymied efforts at reform.

Still, they note that improving the provision of electricity is a clear opportunity to improve basic services to its citizens, boosting government legitimacy and acceptance in areas under its control, especially as it seeks to retake territory from IS.

Khatteeb and Istepanian hold that a comprehensive strategy is needed, one that incorporates an expanded role for the private sector, rationalized electricity tariffs, and a host of technical fixes to improve efficiency.

Ultimately, they contend, much will depend on whether the government of Prime Minister Haidar al-Abadi views the IS threat as an excuse for inaction or an impetus for change.

Please click here to download the full report in English, or here to download in Arabic.

(Source: Brookings Institution)

Report first published in nina-iraq.com, the magazine for Iraqi women everywhere.

By Dr. Basil Al-Fakhri, formerly of the Electricity Power Commission-IRAQ [1988-1989], consultant in Western power Utility, KBR consultant and SMEC consultant-Australia[2004-2012].

It is my belief that the Ministry of Electricity [ME] needs to engage with international consulting firms (this is what happens with oil contracts).

These consultation periods should last no less than 10 years and should explore planning, studies, production, transmission, and distribution.

It is suggested that countries such as Britain, Sweden, Germany, France and Japan. should take the lead in this as they have accumulated expertise for systems which can be implemented in Iraq.

In addition, these consulting utilities firm possess advanced training in power generation and supply, and hence this will put Iraq on the right track also. Indeed, if we plan wisely we can leapfrog other nations in the region – overtaking Libya and Jordan, Turkey, Iran and Saudi Arabia as market leaders.

Implementation of the right kind of technology at every stage will of course play a crucial part.

Please click here to view the full article.

By John Lee.

Basra governorate has reportedly approved 60 new power projects valued at a total of $218 million (255 billion Iraqi dinars) within its 2015 budget.

The projects were given the green light at an emergency meeting of the governing council  on Monday, and were fewer than desired because of budget constraints.

Emirates 24|7 quotes a Basra official as saying that the governorate, Iraq’s wealthiest province, approved a budget of about 4.3 trillion dinars (3.6 billion dollars) for 2015, but was allocated only 1.3 trillion dinars (1.11 billion dollars) by Baghdad due to lower oil prices and soaring military spending.

(Source: Emirates 24|7)

(Electricity image via Shutterstock)