BAGHDAD, Dec 17 (Reuters): Iraq plans to build a pipeline network to carry oil products across all its territory as an alternative to expensive and hazardous transport by tanker truck, Oil Minister Jabar al-Luaibi said on Saturday.
The network is part of a "strategic" plan for oil transportation that includes pipelines to deliver crude and oil products to neighboring countries, he said.
The only crude pipeline now in operation in Iraq links the northern, semi-autonomous Kurdish region to Turkey's Mediterranean coast. All other crude pipelines were shut down or destroyed in the past 35 years as a result of wars and conflicts. Iraq, OPEC's second-largest producer after Saudi Arabia, once had an extensive network of pipelines to export its crude.
One of them carried Iraqi oil across Syria to Lebanon's Mediterranean coast, another to Turkey's Mediterranean coast, largely bypassing the Kurdish region, and one to the Red Sea across Saudi Arabia. Iraq earlier this month announced plans to build a crude pipeline to fellow OPEC member Iran.
Xinhua from Tehran adds: Iran will put its largest oil field, Azadegan, on tender to finalise a deal for its development study by summer 2018, Financial Tribune daily quoted Iran's Petroleum Minister Bijan Namdar Zanganeh as saying on Saturday.
"A deal will be concluded by summer next year if the tender goes as planned," said Zanganeh on the sidelines of signing a gas deal with Russia's Gazprom in Tehran.
Ali Kardor, the chief executive officer of Iran's state oil company, NIOC, said Friday that Japan's INPEX, China's CNPC, Royal Dutch Shell and France's Total have presented their proposals on Azadegan.
"Other companies have requested more time to submit their technical surveys," Kardor said without providing details. Malaysia's Petronas is also interested in the project, having presented its findings on the oilfield, according to the report.
Azadegan is shared with Iraq, and Iran is in a race with its neighbor to develop the reservoir. Iran's share of the field amounts to some 33 billion barrels of crude in place.
Dutch Shell has developed the Iraqi stretch of the reservoir, known as Majnoon oil field in the southern city of Basra. Majnoon came into production in 2014.
