The Iraqi oil ministry has asked BP PLC (BP) and its partner China National Petroleum Corp., or CNPC, to change the signature bonus for the Rumaila oil field to unrecoverable but at a reduced sum from the proposed recoverable soft loan, a senior Iraqi oil official said Thursday.
The Iraqi oil ministry has asked BP PLC (BP) and its partner China
National Petroleum Corp., or CNPC, to change the signature bonus for the
Rumaila oil field to unrecoverable but at a reduced sum from the proposed
recoverable soft loan, a senior Iraqi oil official said Thursday.
Iraq
has
set a recoverable five-year soft loan of $500 million for the super-giant
Rumaila oil field in southern
Iraq
to be
paid by BP and CNPC. Sabah Abdulkadhem al-Saaidi said the ministry asked them
instead to pay an unrecoverable $100 million signature bonus.
"We are still in discussions with them," Saaidi told Dow Jones
Newswires.
Saaidi said that the $500 million unrecoverable soft loan needs an approval
from the Iraqi parliament, which hasn't yet sat following the country's March 7
general elections.
A BP executive based in
Iraq
refused to comment.
Three Iraqi oil fields--Rumaila, West Qurna Phase 1 and Zubair--were listed in
the first licensing auction,
Iraq
's
first major competitive energy tender in decades and one of the biggest in
history, in June 2009.
In the eight oil deals that
Iraq
awarded to international oil companies during the second post-war bidding round
in December 2009, the government set signature bonuses ranging between $100
million and $150 million in accordance with the size of the field.
When asked why the ministry decided to alter these loans to signature bonuses
for the fields in the first bidding round, Saaidi said: "When we set the
recoverable loans earlier last year, oil prices were very low--hovering around
$38 a barrel--and
Iraq
was
in dire need of cash. Now oil prices are much higher and
Iraq
earns
more money from its oil sales. So
Iraq
is
now in a better situation."
Iraq
,
which sits atop the world's third-largest oil reserves, has signed 11 major oil
deals with the aim of boosting its production to 12 million barrels a day in
six to seven years' time, up from 2.4 million barrels a day.
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