Iraq plans to award oil and gas exploration and development contracts in 11 new blocks on April 15, oil ministry spokesman Asim Jihad said on Sunday.

Iraq had initially set June 21 as the date to open the bids for the new blocks, located in border areas with Iran and Kuwait, and in offshore Gulf waters.

Bidding documents will be made available to oil companies planning to make offers on April 13, Jihad told Reuters. The offers will have to be submitted on April 15 and the winners will be announced the same day, he added.

The oil ministry announced on Thursday measures to reduce the fees received by the oil companies from the government in the new contracts.

The new contracts will exclude oil by-products from the companies' revenues, establish a linkage between prevailing oil prices and their remuneration, and introduce a royalty element.

Oil producers in Iraq currently receive a fee from the government linked to production increases, which include crude and oil by-products such as liquefied petroleum gas and dry gas.</s>BAGHDAD, April 1 (Reuters) - Iraq plans to award oil and gas exploration and development contracts in 11 new blocks on April 15, oil ministry spokesman Asim Jihad said on Sunday.

Iraq had initially set June 21 as the date to open the bids for the new blocks, located in border areas with Iran and Kuwait, and in offshore Gulf waters.

Bidding documents will be made available to oil companies planning to make offers on April 13, Jihad told Reuters. The offers will have to be submitted on April 15 and the winners will be announced the same day, he added.

The oil ministry announced on Thursday measures to reduce the fees received by the oil companies from the government in the new contracts.

The new contracts will exclude oil by-products from the companies' revenues, establish a linkage between prevailing oil prices and their remuneration, and introduce a royalty element.

Oil producers in Iraq currently receive a fee from the government linked to production increases, which include crude and oil by-products such as liquefied petroleum gas and dry gas.

OPEC's second largest producer, after Saudi Arabia, Iraq decided to change the contracts after a glut caused oil prices to crash in 2014, reducing Baghdad's ability to pay the fees.

Companies including BP, Exxon Mobil, Eni , Total and Royal Dutch Shell helped Iraq grow its production in the past decade by over 2.5 million barrels per day (bpd) to about 4.7 million bpd.

The semi-autonomous Kurdistan Regional Government produces oil and gas from fields under its control in northern Iraq under a production sharing model more profitable to companies.

The new contracts offered by Baghdad will also set a time limit for companies to end gas flaring from oil fields they develop on territory under its control.

Iraq continues to flare some of the gas extracted alongside crude oil at its fields because it lacks the facilities to process it into fuel for local consumption or exports.

Iraq hopes to end gas flaring by 2021, which costs nearly $2.5 billion in lost revenue for the government and would be sufficient to meet most of its unmet needs for gas-based power generation, according to the World Bank. (Reporting by Maher Chmaytelli; Editing by Mark Potter)</s>Iraq plans to award oil and gas exploration and development contracts in 11 new blocks on April 15, oil ministry spokesman Asim Jihad said on Sunday, Al Jazeera reports.

Iraq had initially set June 21 as the date to open the bids for the new blocks, located in border areas with Iran and Kuwait, and in offshore Gulf waters.

Bidding documents will be made available to oil companies planning to make offers on April 13, Jihad told the Reuters news agency. The offers will have to be submitted on April 15 and the winners will be announced the same day, he added.

The oil ministry announced on Thursday measures to reduce the fees received by the oil companies from the government in the new contracts.

The new contracts will exclude oil by-products from the companies' revenues, establish a linkage between prevailing oil prices and their remuneration, and introduce a royalty element.</s>BAGHDAD, April 1 (Reuters) - Iraq plans to award oil and gas exploration and development contracts in 11 new blocks on April 15, oil ministry spokemsan Asim Jihad said on Sunday.

Bidding documents will be made available to oil companies planning to make offers on April 13, he told Reuters. The offers will have to be subitted on April 15 and the winners will be announced the same day, he added.

Iraq had initially set June 21 as the date to open the bids. (Reporting by Maher Chmaytelli; Editing by Mark Potter)</s>One school of thought is that future oil demand is set to decline because consumers will have better options. Many in this “peak demand” camp believe that the growth of electric vehicles will soon make oil obsolete.

That’s a relatively painless view of the future and is consistent with much of our past experience. Old technologies are frequently replaced by newer, better, and cheaper technologies.

I have written previously on why I don’t believe this version of future oil demand will unfold anytime soon. In a nutshell, if you “do the math,” it becomes clear that it will be years before EVs can take a meaningful bite out of oil demand.

Meanwhile, some organizations are sounding the alarm that rather than a peak demand scenario, we may soon face a peak supply scenario. Or at the least, the loss of global excess spare capacity. The last time this happened, oil prices rose above $100 a barrel.

In January 2017, Saudi Arabia’s energy minister Khalid A. Al-Falih warned CNBC that he foresaw a risk of oil shortages by 2020:

“I believe if the investment flows that we have seen the last two or three years continue in the next two or three years, we will have a shortage of oil supply by 2020. We know, from what we have seen in the last couple of years, that prices around the current level and below are not attracting enough investment. We know the level of natural decline that existing production is undergoing, and we know that demand is picking up at 1.2 to 1.5 million barrels a year. So between increase in demand and natural decline, we need millions of barrels every year to be brought to the market, which requires massive investment.”

In March 2017, the International Energy Agency published its market analysis and forecast report, Oil 2017. In the report, the IEA warned that the global investment slump of 2015 and 2016 already poses a risk to future oil supplies and that 2017 global spending didn’t look encouraging. Oil supplies are growing in the U.S., Canada, and a few other places around the world, but the IEA report concluded that this growth could stall by 2020 if spending doesn’t pick up. Related: Europe’s Biggest Gas Field To Close Over Quake Risk

The report projects that if current trends continue, spare production capacity in 2022 will fall to the lowest level since 2008 (when oil prices nearly reached $150/BBL). On the topic of EVs, the IEA estimated they will only displace small amounts of transportation fuel by 2022. Further, the IEA said that it doesn’t foresee peak oil demand anytime soon.

Halliburton, the world’s largest hydraulic fracturing service provider, reiterated the IEA’s forecast last summer at the World Petroleum Congress in Istanbul. Mark Richard, a Senior Vice President with the company, said that the $2 trillion in spending cuts in the global oil industry over the past few years would impact the price of oil around 2020. Richard added, “Sooner or later, the market is going to catch up. You’ll see some kind of spike in the price of oil. Maybe somewhere around 2020-2021, but it’s got to catch up sooner or later.”

The British multinational bank HSBC gave similar warnings in its Peak Oil Report 2017. The report noted that the oil market is currently adequately supplied, but spare production capacity could soon shrink to just 1 percent of global supply, bringing the risk of disruption and the subsequent volatility back to the oil markets. HSBC noted that oil demand continues to grow at more than one million BPD every year, and they didn’t see a peak demand scenario before 2040.

The HSBC report further noted that global oil discoveries have been declining and that 81 percent of the world liquid production is already in decline.

Shale Oil and OPEC May Not Be Enough

Former Energy Information Administration (EIA) head Adam Sieminski warned of a decade of disorder:

“Maybe we are going to be less volatile now because shale can feed into rising demand. I’m thinking that the decade of the ‘20s is going to be one of difficulties. That’s why I call it the decade of disorder. We’re not getting enough capital investment now, I don’t know that shale is going to be able to do it all.”

There are some who suppose that OPEC has enough spare capacity to flood the market and keep oil prices in check. But Ed Morse, Citibank’s Global Head of Commodities Research, warned that OPEC may be pumping at maximum capacity and that there is a risk of a market squeeze due to under-investment by OPEC countries:

“Fear in the market has been that OPEC production will rise dramatically, however, there could be a supply gap emerging, which could point to a tighter market. We’re seeing more and more evidence that it’s not the international oil companies, it’s not the independent oil companies that are lagging new investments, but it’s OPEC countries lagging, particularly those five [Libya, Nigeria, Venezuela, Iran and Iraq].”

But the risk isn’t just from lack of investment. On the topic of new global oil discoveries, in December, Norwegian research firm Rystad Energy reported that oil companies discovered less than seven billion barrels of oil and gas in 2017 — the lowest number on record. Rystad indicated that this would only replace 11 percent of 2017 oil and gas production, and that the last time the world discovered enough oil and gas to completely replace that year’s production was 2006. Related: The Petrodollar Isn’t Dead Yet

Since the beginning of the shale revolution a decade ago, the world has discovered 110 billion barrels of oil. Meanwhile, consumption has totaled 360 billion barrels. This 250-billion-barrel deficit between discoveries and consumption seems sure to grow in the years ahead, given recent oil discovery trends.

It is understandable why people would be complacent about this scenario. After all, didn’t the world face similar risks a decade ago, only to have shale oil save the day? But it isn’t clear that there is another “shale oil miracle” that is ready to save the day. There are indeed more high-cost oil resources out there that can be developed, but these projects take a long time to complete. That’s why we can look out two to three years and see an impending supply crunch. The longer investments in the industry remain depressed, the more unavoidable this scenario becomes.
• None U.S. Petroleum Imports Could Fall To Zero In 2020</s>Bahrain government on Sunday announced that it has discovered the country's biggest oilfield in decades. According to the country's official news agency, the announcement was made by Bahrain's Higher Committee for Natural Resources and Economic Security, chaired by HRH the Crown Prince, Prince Salman bin Hamad Al Khalifa.

Not much details are available on the size of the newly found reserves in the Khaleej Al Bahrain Basin, located off the west coast of the Kingdom, or on the expected date of start of production. However, it is expected that the new tight oil (which is found in impermeable shale and limestone rock deposits) and deep gas resource discovery could have a major impact on the country's financial position and supply of oil.

"Following the initial discovery of the resource, detailed analysis of the find's content, size and extraction viability has been undertaken alongside internationally-renowned petroleum industry consultants, DeGolyer and MacNaughton (Demac)", the Bahrain News Agency quoted Bahrain's Minister of Oil, Shaikh Mohamed bin Khalifa Al Khalifa, as saying.

The kingdom is not energy rich like its Gulf neighbors and presently pumps about 45,000 barrels of oil a day from its Bahrain Field and shares income from a deposit with Saudi Arabia that produces about 300,000 barrels a day, according to Bloomberg data.

Arab countries hold most of the oil reserves in the world's total proven reserves. According to US Information Energy Association's data (as of 2016), United States, Saudi Arabia, Russia, China, Canada, Iraq, Kuwait, Iran, United Arab Emirates, Brazil are the top producers and consumers of oil-crude oil, all other petroleum liquids, and biofuels.

The financial position of the country has come under scrutiny by rating agencies in recent months. In last year global rating agency, Moody's lowered the country's long-term issuer rating by two notches to B1, from Ba2, and maintained the 'negative' outlook. Also at the beginning of March this year Fitch Ratings downgraded Bahrain by two notches.</s>Baku. 30 January. REPORT.AZ/ Iran has cancelled an oil conference in London next month, when Tehran was expected to reveal its new oil and gas contracts to investors, apparently over a delay in getting visas, Report informs citing the Reuters deputy head of the National Iranian Oil Co. (NIOC) Ali Kardor said that.

The deputy head of the National Iranian Oil Co. (NIOC) also said foreign companies would be invited in May to bid for new oil contracts.

"The London conference has been cancelled because the British embassy in Tehran could not issue visas for representatives of Iranian companies as its visa section has yet to become active," Ali Kardor told the weekly. "And they had to acquire their visas from a third country."

The conference has been postponed five times because of uncertainty over sanctions. In September, Iranian oil ministry officials said the Iran Petroleum Contract (IPC) would be revealed in London in Feb. 22-24.</s>Baghdad has approved an increase in Iraq’s crude oil production capacity to as much as 6.5 million bpd by 2022. This compares to a current production capacity of below 5 million barrels and production rates—as reported by the local energy ministry—of around 4.4 million bpd as per its OPEC quota.

Crude oil export income accounts for the bulk of government revenues and is likely to continue to do so for the observable future as diversification options are few and the funds needed for a shift away from oil can only come from oil.

This huge dependence on crude revenues has made Iraq the focus of doubts around compliance with the 2016 OPEC+ production cut deal, with many expecting that the cartel’s number-two producer will be the first to start cheating.

Indeed, Iraq has fallen consistently short of complying with its quota of 4.35 million bpd, but its underperformance has been more than offset by Saudi Arabia and Venezuela. Iraq was also the hardest OPEC member to convince that the cuts were necessary. Now the country is in line, apparently sticking to whatever OPEC decides in terms of further extensions of the deal. At the same time, however, it is planning a tender for 11 new fields later this month. Related: EV Revolution Could Cost Thousands Of Jobs

The tender, to take place in mid-April, will offer fields in the eastern and southern parts of Iraq. According to the energy ministry, 13 foreign oil companies have signed up for the event, at which the fields will be announced.

Meanwhile, Oil Minister Jabbar al-Luiebi recently told media that Iraq’s proven crude oil reserves could be much higher than previously estimated. Last year, Iraq updated the estimate for its proven reserves to 153 billion barrels from 143 billion barrels, but if Luiebi is right, the figure could actually be double the 2017 estimate. This would make Iraq the country with the largest proven oil reserves in the world.
• None An Oil Price Rally Is Likely</s>Baku. 23 June. REPORT.AZ/ Last year Russia became the second country for export of oil and oil products to Turkey.

Report informs referring to IRNA, in 2015 Russia exported 7 mln tons of oil and oil products to Turkey, of which more than 3 mln tons were oil, 2.6 mln tons of diesel fuel, more than 1.2 mln tons of other oil products.

According to the information, during the reporting year Turkey imported most of Iraq oil (11.4 mln tons), and the third largest exporter became Iran (5.6 mln tons). Overall, total imports amounted to 39 mln tons of oil and oil products ( 25 mln tons oil).

Turkey meets 93% of demand for oil and gas at the expense of imports.</s>BAGHDAD, April 1 (Reuters) - The Iraqi cabinet on Sunday approved a plan to raise the nation's crude oil output capacity to 6.5 million barrels per day by 2022, according to a government statement.

Iraqi Oil Minister Jabar al-Luaibi said in January capacity was currently close to 5 million bpd.

The country is producing more than 4.4 million bpd in line with an agreement between the 14-member Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries and other exporters including Russia to cut supply to boost oil prices.

OPEC's second-largest producer, after Saudi Arabia, Iraq plans to award oil and gas exploration and development contracts in 11 new blocks on April 15.

The Iraqi government depends on the sector for more than 90 percent of its income. (Reporting by Maher Chmaytelli; Editing by Andrew Roche)
Iraq's Oil Ministry brings forward the proposed date for awarding oil exploration contracts for new fields offshore and near the Iranian and Kuwaiti borders to April 15.