Iraq, one of the world\u2019s biggest oil producers, aims to boost its crude reserves to more than 160 billion barrels, Oil Minister Hayan Abdel Ghani said on Saturday.
\nThe minister\u2019s comment came during the launch of new licensing rounds for 29 oil and gas fields.
\nAccording to the World Bank, Iraq has 145 billion barrels of proven oil reserves amounting to 96 years\u2019 worth of production at the current rate.
\nThese are among the largest crude reserves in the world.
\n\u201cThe ministry has put forward 29 promising projects today,\u201d Abdel Ghani said during the opening of the new bidding process that will last three days.
\n\u201cWe hope to announce an increase of Iraq\u2019s proven oil reserves to more than 160 billion barrels,\u201d he added.
\nIraq has completed five licensing rounds since 2008.
\nAbdel Ghani said the government will support and assist the winning companies.
\nThe new rounds include fields and exploration blocs in 12 provinces and an offshore bloc — the first to be explored in Iraqi territorial waters in the Gulf.
\nIraq also hopes the blocs will lead to increased natural gas production to help reduce dependence on imports from Iran, a crucial supplier for Iraqi power generation.
\nIraq, trying to move past decades of war and prior sanctions that led to underinvestment, was left dependent on imports from its eastern neighbor for a third of its gas needs.
\n\u201cIraq anticipates deriving more than 3,459 million standard cubic feet of gas per day (98 million cubic meters) and over one million barrels of oil per day from these licensing rounds,\u201d according to a statement by the prime minister\u2019s media office.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Iraq, one of the world\u2019s biggest oil producers, aims to boost its crude reserves to more than 160 billion barrels, Oil Minister Hayan Abdel Ghani said on Saturday. The minister\u2019s comment came during the launch of new licensing rounds for 29 oil and gas fields. According to the World Bank, Iraq has 145 billion barrels …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":21552,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21542","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21542","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21542"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21542\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21553,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21542\/revisions\/21553"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21552"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21542"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21542"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21542"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}