BAGHDAD: Iraq announced on Wednesday a new major oil reserve discovery that could add a daily production surge of 1000 cubic meters.
Quoted by media, Karim Hattab, director-general at the Iraqi Oil Exploration Company, said exploratory drilling by Japanese oil firm INPEX and Russian Lukoil in the Mishrif horizon, in the southern province of Basra, found production potentials worth 1000 cubic meters a day.
The newly-spotted discovery is located within an exploration site that had added ten million barrles to Iraq’s oil reserve, according to Hattab.
In a statement, INPEX, which holds a 40% participating interest in the field through INPEX South Iraq, Ltd., a subsidiary, said “as a result of this exploratory drilling campaign, INPEX and LUKOIL discovered a highly productive oil reservoir in the Mishrif horizon with a confirmed production volume capacity of more than 8,000 barrels per day from crude oil production tests that were subsequently conducted.
The statement added that “based on these results, INPEX and LUKOIL expect there will be a high probability of discovering a large oil field depending on the evaluation results of additional exploration activities.”
Iraq is OPEC’s second largest oil producer, following Saudi Arabia. It had pledged to cut 210.000 barrels of its daily production to 4.35 million barrels starting January in line with an historic OPEC members agreement reached in a Vienna meeting in December. It had previously been reluctant to take the move citing its terrorism-battered economy. OPEC took the move in an attempt to prop up falling oil prices.
