Iraq’s oil ministry has adopted an erratic approach to its downstream rehabilitation plans over the past year, announcing and re-announcing planned refineries of various capacity seemingly at random.
This week’s donor conference on Iraqi reconstruction in Kuwait (MEES, 16 February) has brought a measure of clarity to the picture, cutting down the list of proposals to three clearly defined greenfield projects and two rehabilitations. Baghdad estimates that $7.2bn needs to be spent on rehabilitating the Iraqi oil sector over the next five years, and Minister of Oil Jabbar al-Luaibi says that $4bn of this would need to be spent in the downstream sector. (CONTINUED - 864 WORDS)
