Iraq to meet Iran, Kuwait on cross-border oil fields
ABUJA, 17 December 2006 (Kuwait Times)
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Iraqi officials are to meet representatives from Iran later this month and Kuwait after that to discuss sharing oil production contracts in cross-border fields, Iraq's oil minister said yesterday. Speaking at a press briefing on the side of a Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries meeting here, Hussein Al-Shahristani said: "We will meet in a sitting committee...with Iran in December" to examine data on the fields. Al-Shahristani added the parties will then "select a company in a bidding round to assess the reserves." Separately, Al-Shahristani said some $1 billion of a $1.6 billion loan granted by the Japan Bank for International Cooperation would be invested in a new fluid catalytic cracking unit at Basra's refinery. An FCC unit produces lighter products such as gasoline from heavier crude fractions. He said some of the loan would also be used for a new pipeline and floating terminal in the Gulf and the processing of gas, which is currently flared off. In addition, the minister said he expects a new hydrocarbon law, which would enable the signature of the first national oil contracts since the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, to be enacted in January. He said all contracts signed under Saddam and since would be reviewed.
The new contracts would be overseen by an Iraq Petroleum Council that will define the rules of licensing qualifications as well as which companies could pre-qualify.
He said most details of the law had been agreed with the Kurds in the oil-rich north, who controversially have set up a separate licensing process, though there remained sticking points on the council's decision procedures. In another development, Iraq's interior minister set off for Damascus yesterday for talks with Syrian officials on improving security cooperation with a country that has been accused of supporting Iraqi insurgents.
Minister Jawad Al-Bolani will head to Syria from Amman, where he signed a cooperation agreement with Jordan, said Brigadier General Abdel Karim Khalaf, director of the National Command Centre of the Interior Ministry.
"Minister Bolani will meet Syrian officials to discuss issues related to security and borders, besides other issues pending between the two countries," Khalaf said.
On Nov 21, Iraq and Syria announced the restoration of diplomatic ties 26 years after the then Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein broke them off in protest at Syria's support for Iran in its war against Iraq.
The move came at the end of a visit to Baghdad by Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Muallem, the first by a foreign minister from Damascus since the 2003 overthrow of Saddam Hussein in a US-led invasion.
The United States has accused Syria of allowing exiled Saddam supporters and Islamic radicals to send support and reinforcements across its eastern border into Iraq, where insurgents are fighting the US-backed administration.
Nevertheless, Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki's embattled coalition government has announced plans to reach out to all of Iraq's neighbours in a bid to build alliances to fight violent extremism in the region
Iraq to meet Iran, Kuwait on cross-border oil fields | Iraq Updates