Iraq's Second Licensing Round (2009)

The second round of auctions offered by the Ministry of Oil took place over the 11-12 December 2009. The terms and process of the second round were similar to the first, which saw the re-entry into Iraq of international oil companies for the first time since nationalisation of the industry in the 1970s. The lead time to complete the auction process was faster for the second round than the first because the preliminary work had been done.

Ten major oilfields were up for bid in the second round, which produced deals for seven of those fields. The fields receiving successful bids were Halfaya, Majnoon, Qayara, Badra, Garraf, Najmah and West Qurna 2. The three fields receiving no bids were East Baghdad, the Eastern Fields and Middle Furat.

=Process= In all, a total of 40 companies pre-qualified for the bidding round after submitting data proving they met the Iraqi Oil Ministry's criteria for technical, financial, legal, training, and HSE (Health, Safety and Environment) competence. The second round followed the same procedures as the first round with few deviations.

=Results= There were 17 bidding consortia in total, and the seven winning consortia gained access to fields with proven reserves of 32 billion barrels of oil, or over a quarter of Iraq's proven reserves. The production projections from the companies winning bids in the second round had the potential to add about 4.765 million barrels of oil to its daily production total.

The fields awarded lie in five of Iraq's eighteen provinces, four in southern provinces (Basra, Maysan, Dhi Qar, and Was it) and one in a northern province (Nineve).

The table below shows the make-up of the consortia, along with agreed per-barrel remuneration fees and the agreed level of plateau production they should reach:

=References=