Friday, January 8, 2010

Iraqi Oil Reserves By Province

I found an interesting report prepared by Kamil al-Mehaidi for the Revenue Watch Institute. It appears to be as of 2006.  Here's what the Institute says of itself:
The Revenue Watch Institute is a non-profit policy institute and grantmaking organization that promotes the responsible management of oil, gas and mineral resources for the public good. With effective revenue management, citizen engagement and real government accountability, natural resource wealth can drive development and national growth. RWI provides the expertise, funding and technical assistance to help countries realize these benefits.

The Revenue Watch Institute is the only organization dedicated exclusively to addressing the special problems of oil, gas and mining-dependent countries—countries where poverty, conflict and corruption too often converge.

RWI is funded through the generous support of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, and the Open Society Institute, along with several other donors. First launched in 2002 as the Revenue Watch Program of the Open Society Institute, it became an independent organization in June 2006.

Revenue Watch promotes transparent, accountable and effective management of natural resource wealth to help countries avoid the "resource curse." We take a comprehensive approach to improving governance and development across the entire value chain—from the organization of extractive production, revenue generation and revenue management, through the expenditure processes and development outcomes in resource rich countries.
The report has some very interesting detail level tables of reserves and production by province. I don't yet have an independent opinion about the accuracy of these or other Iraqi reserve figures, but thought the information was interesting and worth passing along. This is certainly a level of transparency we would love to have in Saudi Arabia.
This table summarizes reserves by province in total:



This one shows reserves and current production as of the report date by province in the producing fields.



And this one shows the undeveloped fields:



This explains one thing that was mysterious to me - why the reserves in my table on Monday only added up to 63gb.  The al-Shahristani plan relies almost entirely on reserves in Basra and Amara provinces, and thus on only 2/3 of the country's reserves by province.

4 comments:

  1. Bookmarked! Note that they point out that Kirkuk was 63% depleted in 2006 and should be producing at about half current volume of 455 kb/d in 10 years. But the UN report (2000) said Kirkuk was producing 755 kb/d, 29% of annual 2570 kb/d (EIA). 455 kb/d would be only 22% of 1996 kb/d for 2006 (EIA again). Was the field declining already? Or was it shut in more proportionately than Southern fields?

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  2. Here is a site that gives a very different assessment of Iraq's remaining oil
    http://www.searchanddiscovery.net/documents/gong03/index.htm

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  3. I did the tally for the Basra region. Remember, these were figures from 2003. There has been production since then and the war has damaged some of the fields.

    field original 2003
    Majnoun 13833 9487
    tuba 558 122
    rumalia 22000 11022
    siba 770 474
    n. omar 1000 219
    w. kuma 4885 4827
    ratawi 1517 242
    rachi 870 177
    safwan 558 227

    sum 45991 26797

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  4. Michael - many thanks for that reference which I shall study.

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