Tehran – Pak Sahafat – Iraq has announced the launch of a 200-million-cubic-foot-a-day gas collection project in two southern oil fields in partnership with US-based Baker Hughes.
According to the Al-Khaleej Al-Jadeed news website on Monday, announcing the start of the project, Iraqi Oil Minister Ehsan Abdul Jabbar said: After three years of continuous efforts, the gas investment project started in Al-Nasiriyah and Al-Gharaf fields.
He described the project as “an important economic step” and added: “The cost of this project is $ 370 million and it will be implemented within 30 months.”
He stated: Iraq needs to implement a very large strategic plan to advance all its resources within a certain period of time.
Baker Hughes Company will invest in the field of gas along with oil extracted in Al-Nasiriyah and Al-Gharaf fields in Dhi Qar province.
In August 2018, the American company signed a contract with the Iraqi government for this project with a capacity of 200 million cubic feet per day, as well as the production of 1,000 tons of liquefied natural gas and 900 cubic meters of condensate per day.
Iraq has to burn billions of cubic feet of gas along with the extracted oil in order to double its investment capacity.
According to the Ministry of Petroleum, Iraq currently produces approximately 2.7 billion cubic feet of gas.
Abdul Jabbar added: The gas investment project in Al-Nasiriyah and Al-Gharaf fields was supposed to start in 2018, but so far it has been delayed without announcing the reasons, and therefore we need to continue our work and efforts.
According to an estimate by the Iraqi Ministry of Oil, the country has approximately 132 trillion cubic feet of gas reserves, but is currently burning 700 billion cubic feet due to lack of facilities to exploit it.
Iraq continues to import gas from Iran to run its power plants. Iraq has signed contracts with Chinese companies and France’s Total over the past few months to exploit mobile gas to pave the way for power plants and halt gas burning by 2024.