France-based energy giant TotalEnergies is reportedly engaging with the Basrah Oil Company of Iraq, which is state owned, to agree some key contracts ahead of proceeding with a number of renewable, gas and oil projects worth billions of dollars.
Reuters reports the deputy oil minister of Iraq for upstream affairs, Basim Mohammed, as saying that the two parties:
“…are now in the process of finalising some contractual procedures and documents necessary to activate the contract. Meetings continue with TotalEnergies to avoid any delay and the contract will be activated in the second half of this year to start operations.”
TotalEnergies, which makes the Total grease and lubricant range, originally signed a deal for the projects in 2021, but disagreements about how to implement it halted progress. The impasse was broken last month when TotalEnergies and the Iraqi Government came to an agreement about ownership distribution of the Gas Growth Integrated Project (GGIP). TotalEnergies, the Basrah Oil Company and QatarEnergy will now hold stakes of 45%, 30% and 25%, respectively.
The GGIP will involve some $10 billion in initial investments. These include recovering gas that is currently flared at three oilfields and using it instead to generate power, building a solar power plant to supply up to a gigawatt of power to the grid around Basrah and increasing regional oil production by constructing a plant to treat seawater ready for injection into wells. Subsequent investment phases could result in the deal being worth as much as $27 billion.
