Japan's Mitsubishi, Japex in talks with Turkey on Iraqi oil cooperation
Güncelleme Tarihi:
Mitsubishi Corp. and Japan Petroleum Exploration Co. will discuss with Turkey's state-controlled company next week on joint exploration and production in Iraq, the holder of the world's third-largest oil reserves, Bloomberg reported on Friday.
Ankara-based Turkish Petroleum Corporation (TPAO) has called on the company to develop oil fields in the Middle Eastern country, a spokesman with Japan's largest trading house said under condition of anonymity because of company policy.
Osamu Watanabe, President of Japan Petroleum known as Japex, will meet Mehmet Uysal, the head of the Turkish company, next week, spokesman Shigeyoshi Hasegawa told Bloomberg. Japex has received a faxed invitation, Hasegawa said.
Turkey and Shell are on the brink of an agreement to carry out joint natural gas exploration works in northern Iraq, earlier media reports suggested. Iraq, who wants to ramp up oil production by 500,000 barrels per day from the current average production of 2.5 million barrels per day (bpd) initially granted permission to 35 oil prospecting companies, including Shell, BP, ExxonMobil, Chevron.Iraq's crude reserves are estimated at about 115 billion barrels, but it is sorely lacking in infrastructure and the latest technology to which it was denied access under years of international sanctions after the 1991 Gulf War.In 2005, Japan Petroleum signed an agreement with the Iraqi government to help the war-torn country plan oil exploration and exploitation projects in untapped reserves, Hasegawa said. Over the past three years, Japex has spent some 100 million yen ($987,000) for the joint study, he said.
Under the accord, Japex has been analyzing oil field data gathered by the Iraqi government for four areas in Iraq: one near Baghdad, one in the Western Desert, one in the northeast, and one in the south.