UPDATE: Shell To Start Drilling At Iraq Majnoon Oil Field In July-MD
March 31 2011 - 10:07AM
Dow Jones News
Royal Dutch Shell PLC (RDSA) along with its partners, Malaysia's
Petronas and the Iraqi state Missan Oil Co., will start drilling
the first new well in the super-giant Majnoon oil field in July, a
company executive said Thursday.
"Shell is targeting July 2011 to spud the first well," Ole
Myklestad, managing director of Shell in Iraq told reporters in
Basra.
Between 15 and 20 wells will be drilled in Majnoon oil field in
southern Iraq and some 27 others will be refurbished to bring
output to 175,000 barrels a day by the end of next year from the
current 60,000 barrels a day, Myklestad said. The new wells and the
refurbish work is part of an early production plan.
The well drilling is part of a contract Shell and its partners
signed with U.S. service giant Halliburton Co. (HAL) and the
state-run Iraqi Drilling Co. last year.
The executive also said that Shell has opened a new office in
Basra to manage its projects in Iraq. The office is to make sure
that "we have the human resources and all the supports required by
an international company in Basra."
Myklestad said that there are some 300 Iraqis working on the
Majnoon project and they are from the state-run South Oil Co. Some
50 Shell expatriate personnel are also working on the project, he
said.
Shell and Petronas won the right to develop Majnoon oil field,
located in Basra governorate in southern Iraq, at an auction held
in Baghdad December 2009. Shells owns 45% of the venture and
Petronas 30%, with Iraq's Missan Oil Co. the remaining 25%.
Shell also will start constructing a 75 kilometer pipeline to
connect Majnoon with the crude oil depots in Faw, as a stop before
shipping the crude into vessels in the Gulf. Myklestad said that
Shell and its partner would provide the finance for building the
pipeline.
The Anglo-Dutch giant is also planning to commence a seismic
survey but after clearing mines left from the 1980-88 Iraq-Iran
war.
"We want to get results of a seismic survey in the next two
years," he said.
-By Hassan Hafidh, Dow Jones Newswires; 962 799 831 831;
hassan.hafidh@dowjones.com
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