Home
Baghdad to finance Jordan-Iraq oil, gas pipeline
BY MUSA KEILANI April 21, 2013
A 1,680-kilometre double pipeline which will pump one-million barrels of oil a day and around 258 million cubic feet of gas from Iraq to Jordan will be built at the expense of the Iraqi government on “build, operate, transfer” basis, according to Jordan’s energy minister.
The statement by Minister of Energy and Mineral Resources Malek Kabariti carried by the state Petra news agency appeared to contradict an earlier government statement that Iraq will bear the cost of building the pipeline from the southern port of Basra to the border with Jordan and the kingdom will pay for the rest of the structure passing through its territory to the Red Sea port of Aqaba.
There was no immediate explanation to the contradiction. However, a Jordanian financial expert said that without immediate external financing for the project was not going to take off.
The pipeline will also have a branch running to Jordan’s sole oil refinery in Zarqa, a town east of the capital Amman. Kabariti was quoted in a statement carried by Petra as saying that the agreement Jordan and Iraq signed recently entails providing the Jordan Petroleum Refinery Company in Zarqa with 150,000 barrels of oil from Iraq daily. Approximately 100 million cubic feet of natural gas will be used by Jordan.
According to official figures on the kingdom’s current energy consumption, the quantity would be enough to meet Jordan’s needs to be paid for from $3 billion in fees levied from Iraq, officials say. The project is expected to be operational by the end of 2017.
According to industry experts, this would be the world’s most expensive pipeline project.
They point out that instead of taking the shortest route between Basra and Aqaba, which would cross Saudi Arabia, the pipelines are planned to snake through the “central heart of the Sunni insurgency and western Iraq, where Al Qaeda remnants supporting the Syrian rebels are active, resulting in a huge horseshoe shape, before finally descending into Aqaba.” Meanwhile, Iraq has said that there are “no further plans” regarding an oil pipeline from Iraq to Egypt, but confirmed that Iraq’s State Company for Oil Projects signed an agreement for the export of oil to Egypt.
“There is currently an agreement between us, but we haven’t yet received any official communications from Baghdad regarding their plans,” according to the Iraqi embassy in Cairo. “But the embassy hasn’t received any additional news regarding this issue.”
A technical delegation from the Iraqi Oil Ministry visited Cairo and held talks with the Egyptian government to supply the latter with four million barrels of crude oil.
[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]
BY MUSA KEILANI April 21, 2013
A 1,680-kilometre double pipeline which will pump one-million barrels of oil a day and around 258 million cubic feet of gas from Iraq to Jordan will be built at the expense of the Iraqi government on “build, operate, transfer” basis, according to Jordan’s energy minister.
The statement by Minister of Energy and Mineral Resources Malek Kabariti carried by the state Petra news agency appeared to contradict an earlier government statement that Iraq will bear the cost of building the pipeline from the southern port of Basra to the border with Jordan and the kingdom will pay for the rest of the structure passing through its territory to the Red Sea port of Aqaba.
There was no immediate explanation to the contradiction. However, a Jordanian financial expert said that without immediate external financing for the project was not going to take off.
The pipeline will also have a branch running to Jordan’s sole oil refinery in Zarqa, a town east of the capital Amman. Kabariti was quoted in a statement carried by Petra as saying that the agreement Jordan and Iraq signed recently entails providing the Jordan Petroleum Refinery Company in Zarqa with 150,000 barrels of oil from Iraq daily. Approximately 100 million cubic feet of natural gas will be used by Jordan.
According to official figures on the kingdom’s current energy consumption, the quantity would be enough to meet Jordan’s needs to be paid for from $3 billion in fees levied from Iraq, officials say. The project is expected to be operational by the end of 2017.
According to industry experts, this would be the world’s most expensive pipeline project.
They point out that instead of taking the shortest route between Basra and Aqaba, which would cross Saudi Arabia, the pipelines are planned to snake through the “central heart of the Sunni insurgency and western Iraq, where Al Qaeda remnants supporting the Syrian rebels are active, resulting in a huge horseshoe shape, before finally descending into Aqaba.” Meanwhile, Iraq has said that there are “no further plans” regarding an oil pipeline from Iraq to Egypt, but confirmed that Iraq’s State Company for Oil Projects signed an agreement for the export of oil to Egypt.
“There is currently an agreement between us, but we haven’t yet received any official communications from Baghdad regarding their plans,” according to the Iraqi embassy in Cairo. “But the embassy hasn’t received any additional news regarding this issue.”
A technical delegation from the Iraqi Oil Ministry visited Cairo and held talks with the Egyptian government to supply the latter with four million barrels of crude oil.
[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]
