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Iraq stumps for outside investment

Michael Kanellos Staff Writer, CNET News.com
Michael Kanellos is editor at large at CNET News.com, where he covers hardware, research and development, start-ups and the tech industry overseas.
Michael Kanellos
2 min read

Iraq will likely begin to seek out deals with private companies to rebuild its destroyed oil and gas fields, officials said at the International Petroleum Technology Conference taking place in Doha, Qatar.

Although security remains a problem, Iraq is set for another election and is looking at ways to rebuild, said Ibrahim Baher Al Olom, the Minister of Oil for Iraq. Any deals will have to preserve the interests of the people in the country.

"There are many contracts in the oil business," he said. Despite the risks, it is important for the regional powers to assist the nation.

"If we cannot stop the terrorist attacks in Iraq, it will spread. Just look at the last few months," he said.

Iraq sits around 115 billion barrels of oil and huge gas reserves, said A. Saadi, an official with the Iraqi Oil Ministry. Exploiting it in the last half century, however, has proven difficult.

In 1961, the country passed Law 80, which limited geographic exploration. It effectively killed exploration for a decade. International oil companies were allowed to enter the country in the 70s, but the Iran-Iraq war stopped that. The two Gulf wars followed after that.

"This will be a very expensive and demanding project. We are seriously thinking that will achieve it with close cooperation with international oil companies," Saadi added.

The contracts between nations and international companies aren't nearly as lopsided as they used to be. National oil companies, those owned by a government, actually own about 90 percent of the world's oil reserves, said to Scott Tinker, director of the Bureau of Economic Geology at the University of Texas.