Chinese company wishes to invest oil well in Wassit – governor

WASSIT / IraqiNews.com: A Chinese oil-extracting company expressed a wish to invest the oil well of Badra in eastern Wassit province, Governor Lateef Hamad al-Tarfa revealed on Friday. “The Badra oil well, 90 km east of al-Kut city, is one of 11 projects the Iraqi oil ministry has announced and put up for investment,” Tarfa told IraqiNews.com news agency. He added that the Chinese request came as China’s Al Waha Company is working on the al-Ahdab oilfield project in the province, referring to the Chinese side’s discussions with Iraq’s North Oil Company and the Wassit province administration. Speaking on the mechanism to sign oil contracts in the province, the governor indicated that the signing of any oil contracts is the exclusive authority of the Iraqi central government, adding the province has nothing to do with this. Al Waha, partly owned by China’s biggest oil company China National Petroleum Corp. (CNPC), embarked on Friday (2/1) on the first stage of the project of al-Ahdab oilfield, 25 km western Kut, in the presence of the Chinese company’s president and staff as well as a delegation from the Iraqi oil ministry’s North Oil Company. The oil ministry had recently launched a plan to attract foreign companies to invest in Iraq’s oil sector and increase the country’s output to reach 4-4.5 million barrels per day (bpd) by 2010 if the discovered oilfields – 80 in number – were developed. Kut, the capital city of Wassit province, lies 180 km southeast of the Iraqi capital Baghdad. AmR (S) 1