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A senior Iraqi oil official has said that oil engineers from the Gulf state have met with their counterparts from BP in preparation for the consortium led by British supermajor’s deal to develop the super giant Rumaila field in the country.
News agency Reuters reported that the acting head of the state-owned South Oil Company (SOC) in Iraq, Dhiya Jaafar, said that were were still a number of issues of a technical nature that needed to be ironed out before the deal is signed at the end of the month.
“We are still in the process of technical discussions and some issues concerning Rumaila deal need to be ironed out. Signing the contract depends on resolving these issues”, Jaafar is quoted by Reuters as saying.
Jaafer has replaced Fayad al-Nema, who ran SOC before being fired last month by the Iraq Oil Ministry.
Although the official line was that Nema had been removed “restructuring”, it is widely believed that Nema was fired for publicly criticising the recent auction for development contracts of the country’s oilfields.
The BP-led consortium includes CNPC of China and was the only collective awarded a development contract at the first round of Iraq’s oilfield auctions.
