BAGHDAD, Dec. 8 (UPI) -- The Iraqi oil sector is drawing accolades from across the East-West divide, with Russian and U.S. players praising ongoing developments.
Russian oil company Gazprom Neft described the Badra oil field in southern Iraq as a magnet for investors. For the 90 days leading up to November, the company said about 15,000 barrels of oil per day were released from Badra in to the country's main pipeline system.
"Once the field is achieving this level of production over a 90 day period, the consortium investors will be reimbursed for costs incurred and paid a fee of $5.50 per barrel of oil equivalent produced," the company said Monday.
Badra is located in eastern Wasit province near the Iraqi border with Iran. The field has an estimated 3 billion barrels of oil reserves. Gazprom Neft serves as the operator under the terms of a 20-year agreement.
The Russian company said the State Oil Marketing Organization is responsible for oil sales from Badra.
"Each quarter SOMO will deliver a share of oil from the Basra export terminal on the Persian Gulf to the investor companies to reimburse their initial project costs," Gazprom Neft explained.
The trumpeting comes less than a week after the Iraqi federal government reached a deal with the semiautonomous Kurdistan Regional Government that ends a long impasse over oil exports.
That document says SOMO has exclusive control over petroleum exports, with the KRG taking 17 percent of all oil revenues.
For U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, the deal represented important steps toward national unity and security taken since Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi came into power in August.
The oil deal funnels some oil revenue to the Iraqi and Kurdish military forces, which are stemming the advance of the group calling itself the Islamic State. All this, Kerry said, means Iraq is stronger than ever before.
"There is still a long way to go, but Iraqi leaders are showing the world that they are determined to avoid the mistakes of the past and repair the broken society that actually was the enablement of the Islamic State's rise," Kerry said Sunday.
