Baghdad, (Business News Report) | The French company Total is scheduled to start its projects in Iraq during the first quarter of this year 2022.
Total will start during the first quarter to build four giant energy projects in south Iraq, the Iraqi News Agency (INA) said.
INA explained that the value of the projects are $27 billion that were signed in Baghdad last September.
This comes at a time when Iraq is trying to liberate its electric power plants from Iran’s expensive gas, by expanding its oil investments.
Perhaps the most recent of these attempts was the signing of a preliminary agreement with the French company Total.
Although Iraq has been late in investing the gas associated with the extraction of oil, it has been rushing for two years to achieve an achievement in this field.
Meanwhile, Iraq imports gas from Iran to operate power plants and fill the shortfall in local production, at a cost of about two billion dollars annually.
Iraq also wastes 20 tons of natural gas associated with oil, annually. This makes the country’s losses in gas combustion operations amount to $7.3 billion each year.
For a long time, Iraq’s plans focused on exploiting the $17 billion BGC project, a joint venture between Royal Dutch Shell, the state-run South Gas Company and Japan’s Mitsubishi.
Total will also undertake a seawater injection project, which the ministry has been trying to implement for about 10 years. The project is pivotal for developing the southern oil fields, which pump most of Iraq’s production.
The project will initially be able to treat 2.5 million barrels of sea water per day. It is aimed in part at raising the oil level to the surface.
It is expected to help overcome the declining production of fields such as Rumaila, West Qurna, Zubair and Majnoon.
In a related context, Ali Nizar, assistant director of the Iraqi Oil Marketing Company (SOMO), expected that oil exports would rise next February to 3.3 million barrels per day.
Nizar said: “Currently, Iraqi oil exports average 3.2 million barrels per day, and we expect them to rise in February.”
According to official data issued by SOMO, the average Iraqi crude oil exports of December last year exceeded 3,277 thousand barrels per day.
