BAGHDAD, Oct. 22 (UPI) -- Baghdad is optimistic about the results of its latest natural gas auction despite it drawing less interest than oil rounds, an Iraqi energy official said.
A consortium led by South Korean gas company KOGAS, Kuwait Energy and Turkish Petroleum International Co. won the rights to develop the Akkas, Siba and Mansouriya gas fields.
Thamer al-Ghadban, an energy adviser to the Iraqi prime minister, said the results of the auction "went very well and we are happy about its results," The Wall Street Journal quoted him as saying.
Two of the fields grabbed by the consortium drew little interest during the last bidding round in June. More than a dozen international energy companies registered for the auction, though only five of them submitted bids.
Combined proven gas reserves at the fields account for 10 percent of all of Iraq's natural gas, or about 11.2 trillion cubic feet.
Two of the fields lie in parts of Iraq prone to insurgent violence. Park Young-sung, a vice president at KOGAS, said the issue would be handled by the Kurdish and central governments.
"We have some security concerns but we will solve that through cooperation with the provincial and central governments," he was quoted as saying.
The natural gas bids paled in comparison to oil auctions, where Baghdad emerged to say it would one day rival Saudi Arabia as an oil state.
