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Oil refinery planned for Iraqi Kurdistan
AFP
ARBIL, Iraq
Petroleumworld.com 07 11 06
Iraqi Kurdistan will soon have its own oil refinery with a capacity of 250,000 barrels per day from newly discovered oil fields, the Lebanese company chosen to implement the project said Sunday.
A memorandum of understanding was signed on Thursday between the Kurdish Minister of Natural Resources, Ashti Horami, and Lebanon's Make Oil AG to build the refinery over the next two years.
"There is an agreement with the Kurdish Regional Government, and we will announce the full details in a week," company director Ahmed Khair al-Din told AFP by phone from the company offices in Beirut.
Make Oil, which was registered in Lebanon in 1995, is already in the process of constructing a cement plant in the northern Kurdish town of Dohuk, near the Turkish border.
According to its rudimentary website, the company specializes in the trade of crude oil as well as the construction of refineries.
The accord comes following the April announcement of the discovery of an oil field in the Zakho region of Kurdistan near the Turkish border -- the first in the Kurdish Autonomous Region.
The discovery was made by Norwegian company DNO and the field is expected to produce 20,000 barrels per day by next year, with a view to increasing output to 200,000 barrels per day by 2008.
Kurdistan has proven reserves of some 3.6 billion barrels, less than 3 percent of Iraq's total, though the Kurdish government has estimated that reserves could be as high as 45 billion barrels.
Though safer than the rest of the country, perceived security risks have kept down interest from major international oil companies, leaving exploration to smaller outfits such as DNO, Canada's Heritage Oil, or Britain's Sterling Energy which specialize in riskier ventures.
Investors are also hesitant because the legal investment framework for the Kurdish region's oil is not clear. Oil exploration in the rest of the country must go through the ministry of oil, and the constitution specifies that all of Iraq's oil belongs to all of its people.
The Kurdish regional government maintains that it has the authority to pursue its own agreements.
AFP 09 0825 GMT 07 06
Copyright ©2006 AFP. All Rights Reserved.
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