Turkish TPIC Wins Iraq Oil Contract

Turkish Petroleum International Company (TPIC), the foreign exploration unit of stateـrun Turkish Petroleum, has won a US$318 million contract to drill 45 wells in Iraq's supergiant Rumaila oilfield, a senior Iraqi oil official said.

Iraq, in desperate need of rebuilding an economy battered by years of war and sanctions, has struck a series of development contracts with global oil majors that could also signal a bonanza for international oil service companies. British oil major BP Plc. and its Chinese partner China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) signed a 20ـyear development contract in 2009 for Rumaila, which has an estimated 17 billion barrels of crude reserves and is the workhorse of Iraq's oil industry.

"We are yet to make a decision on another tender to drill 56 wells in Rumaila. We are still evaluating the submitted bids," Dhiya Jaafar, head of the South Oil Company, told Reuters in the southern oil hub of Basra. Separately, Iraq had invited 10 firms to bid for a contract to drill 56 additional wells at Rumaila, including TPIC, Halliburton Co., and Weatherford International Ltd.

The Rumaila deal was one of 10 Iraq struck in 2009 in a bid to raise oil production capacity to 12 million bpd, rivaling top producer Saudi Arabia and offering an unprecedented workload to international companies. - Reuters