Iraqis to contribute in al-Ahdab oilfield project – Wassit governor

WASSIT / IraqiNews.com: The director of the Chinese Al Waha company, which implements al-Ahdab oilfield, expressed readiness to receive Iraqi workers to contribute in the project’s implementation, the governor of Wassit said on Monday. “The governorate received today (5-1-2009) a written request from the director of Al Waha, in which he expressed the company’s readiness to receive Iraqi workers to take part in the project, noting that would contribute in fighting unemployment after employing Iraqi workers in this huge project,” Latief Hamad al-Tarfa told IraqiNews.com news agency. “The governorate will facilitate the project to ensure it is implemented on time,” he noted. 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 Baghdad.   SH (S)/SR     2