Seaview
09-10-2007, 07:29 PM
VIENNA -(Dow Jones)- Hunt Oil Co.'s agreement with Iraq's semiautonomous Kurdish region to explore for oil is illegal, Iraq's oil minister Hussein al- Shahristani said Monday, in his first public reaction to the deal announced over the weekend.
"Any oil deal has no standing as far as the government of Iraq is concerned," said al-Shahristani. "All these contracts have to be approved by the Federal Authority before they are legal. This (contract) was not presented for approval. It has no standing."
His comments, delivered as he arrived for an OPEC ministers meeting in the Austrian capital, underscore the central government's view that exploration contracts with foreign companies should be signed only after the adoption of a new national oil law.
The deal is one of several the Kurds have signed with foreign oil companies in the past few years and the first since the Kurds put their own oil law into effect in August.
These deals have angered Baghdad, but the Kurdish region appears determined to advance oil exploration in the Denmark-sized area they govern in northern Iraq, as Iraq's long-delayed federal oil law remains hobbled by disagreements.
Al-Shahristani said Iraq was exporting 300,000 barrels a day through its northern export pipeline to Turkey and producing a total of 2.4 million barrels a day. A recent survey by Dow Jones Newswires estimated Iraq was pumping 2.05 million barrels a day.
Referring to current OPEC policy, Al-Shahristani said there doesn't seem to be a shortage of crude oil supply now, noting that he expected high oil prices to fall.
"But we'll be looking carefully at the predictions that our secretariat produces for the fourth quarter and if there's a need to supply the world market with what it want then we'll consider," he said.
"The dollar has significantly devalued in the past few months and that has really affected the income of a number of countries," he added.
http://news.morningstar.com/news/ViewNews.asp?article=/DJ/200709101015DOWJONESDJONLINE000321_univ.xml&Cat=Energy
"Any oil deal has no standing as far as the government of Iraq is concerned," said al-Shahristani. "All these contracts have to be approved by the Federal Authority before they are legal. This (contract) was not presented for approval. It has no standing."
His comments, delivered as he arrived for an OPEC ministers meeting in the Austrian capital, underscore the central government's view that exploration contracts with foreign companies should be signed only after the adoption of a new national oil law.
The deal is one of several the Kurds have signed with foreign oil companies in the past few years and the first since the Kurds put their own oil law into effect in August.
These deals have angered Baghdad, but the Kurdish region appears determined to advance oil exploration in the Denmark-sized area they govern in northern Iraq, as Iraq's long-delayed federal oil law remains hobbled by disagreements.
Al-Shahristani said Iraq was exporting 300,000 barrels a day through its northern export pipeline to Turkey and producing a total of 2.4 million barrels a day. A recent survey by Dow Jones Newswires estimated Iraq was pumping 2.05 million barrels a day.
Referring to current OPEC policy, Al-Shahristani said there doesn't seem to be a shortage of crude oil supply now, noting that he expected high oil prices to fall.
"But we'll be looking carefully at the predictions that our secretariat produces for the fourth quarter and if there's a need to supply the world market with what it want then we'll consider," he said.
"The dollar has significantly devalued in the past few months and that has really affected the income of a number of countries," he added.
http://news.morningstar.com/news/ViewNews.asp?article=/DJ/200709101015DOWJONESDJONLINE000321_univ.xml&Cat=Energy