Northern Iraq building two refineries with Canadian firms
02 January 2008 (World Tribune)
The autonomous Kurdish zone in northern Iraq plans to construct two refineries in a $300 million project with foreign oil companies.
Officials said the Kurdistan Regional Government would offer four production-sharing contracts to finance the construction of two 20,000-barrel-per-day refineries, Middle East Newsline reported. They said the production-sharing contracts were worth $800 million.
The first refinery, located in Miran, was scheduled to be completed by 2010 in a joint venture with Canada’s Heritage Oil. The second refinery, located at the Taq Taq oil field, would be constructed by Genel and Canada’s Addax Petroleum and completed by early 2009.
The central Iraqi government in Baghdad said the latest contracts violate the nation’s new petroleum law. But the Kurdish government has dismissed this amid plans to sign two additional production-sharing contracts worth $500 million with oil majors. Iraq Updates