China and Iraq have signed a US$3 billion deal revising an earlier agreement for China’s biggest oil company to help develop the Ahdab oil field, a statement from the Iraqi embassy in Beijing said.
The deal, restoring a project canceled after the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq, was signed late on Wednesday by Chinese officials and Iraqi Oil Minister Hussain al-Shahristani.
The revised terms of the deal increase the anticipated output from the billion-barrel field to 110,000 barrels per day from the originally planned 90,000 barrels per day, the statement said. The contract is to run for 20 years after production begins three years from now, it said.
Former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein’s regime defied UN sanctions that limited direct foreign dealings with Iraq’s oil industry and signed a deal in 1997 with the state-owned China National Petroleum Corp (CNPC, 中石油).
That contract, worth US$1.2 billion at the time, gave a subsidiary of the Chinese company concessions to develop the field on a production-sharing basis for 22 years. The value for the renegotiated contract is US$3 billion, the statement said.
The new agreement will be a service contract, under which China will not be a partner in profits and instead will be paid for its work.
A spokesman for CNPC, Liu Weijiang, said yesterday that he could not provide any information on the deal.
Once the contract is signed, it will be the first Saddam-era oil deal to be honored by the new Iraqi government. A number of companies say they signed deals with Saddam’s regime and demand that those be honored, or the countries involved be given priority on new agreements.
But the Iraqi statement said that some technical services contracts with other big petroleum companies might be postponed.
The ministry has consistently denied giving any advantage to companies with which Saddam signed deals, instead insisting that oil and gas fields and exploration blocks will be offered up for bids.
Iraq sits on more than 115 billion barrels of oil, but decades of wars, UN sanctions, violence and sabotage have battered its oil industry.
The Ahdab field is located in Shiite-dominated Wasit Province, about 160km southeast of Baghdad. It has been the scene of sporadic attacks since the US-led invasion in 2003.
As security improves, Iraq is trying to bring in foreign companies to help increase crude output from the current 2.5 million barrels a day to 3 million barrels a day by the end of this year, and 4.5 million barrels a day by the end of 2013.
Shares in CNPC’s publicly traded unit, PetroChina, gained 0.23 percent to 13.09 yuan (US$1.91) early yesterday.
MORE VISITORS: The Tourism Administration said that it is seeing positive prospects in its efforts to expand the tourism market in North America and Europe Taiwan has been ranked as the cheapest place in the world to travel to this year, based on a list recommended by NerdWallet. The San Francisco-based personal finance company said that Taiwan topped the list of 16 nations it chose for budget travelers because US tourists do not need visas and travelers can easily have a good meal for less than US$10. A bus ride in Taipei costs just under US$0.50, while subway rides start at US$0.60, the firm said, adding that public transportation in Taiwan is easy to navigate. The firm also called Taiwan a “food lover’s paradise,” citing inexpensive breakfast stalls
TRADE: A mandatory declaration of origin for manufactured goods bound for the US is to take effect on May 7 to block China from exploiting Taiwan’s trade channels All products manufactured in Taiwan and exported to the US must include a signed declaration of origin starting on May 7, the Bureau of Foreign Trade announced yesterday. US President Donald Trump on April 2 imposed a 32 percent tariff on imports from Taiwan, but one week later announced a 90-day pause on its implementation. However, a universal 10 percent tariff was immediately applied to most imports from around the world. On April 12, the Trump administration further exempted computers, smartphones and semiconductors from the new tariffs. In response, President William Lai’s (賴清德) administration has introduced a series of countermeasures to support affected
CROSS-STRAIT: The vast majority of Taiwanese support maintaining the ‘status quo,’ while concern is rising about Beijing’s influence operations More than eight out of 10 Taiwanese reject Beijing’s “one country, two systems” framework for cross-strait relations, according to a survey released by the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) on Thursday. The MAC’s latest quarterly survey found that 84.4 percent of respondents opposed Beijing’s “one country, two systems” formula for handling cross-strait relations — a figure consistent with past polling. Over the past three years, opposition to the framework has remained high, ranging from a low of 83.6 percent in April 2023 to a peak of 89.6 percent in April last year. In the most recent poll, 82.5 percent also rejected China’s
PLUGGING HOLES: The amendments would bring the legislation in line with systems found in other countries such as Japan and the US, Legislator Chen Kuan-ting said Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Chen Kuan-ting (陳冠廷) has proposed amending national security legislation amid a spate of espionage cases. Potential gaps in security vetting procedures for personnel with access to sensitive information prompted him to propose the amendments, which would introduce changes to Article 14 of the Classified National Security Information Protection Act (國家機密保護法), Chen said yesterday. The proposal, which aims to enhance interagency vetting procedures and reduce the risk of classified information leaks, would establish a comprehensive security clearance system in Taiwan, he said. The amendment would require character and loyalty checks for civil servants and intelligence personnel prior to
RSS