10.3 |
Reconstruction: oil, commercial interests, debt relief, asylum and
stabilisation policy
6.
A January 2002
Ministry of Defence (MOD) Defence Intelligence Service (DIS)
report
on Iraq’s
infrastructure stated that Iraq held the second largest proven oil
reserves in the
world at
approximately 115bn barrels, equating to 11 percent of total world
oil reserves.1
It also
held two percent of total world gas reserves. There were
potentially larger
reserves as
many areas were underdeveloped.
7.
The report
estimated that crude oil production was approximately 2.8m barrels
per
day (bpd).
Of that, Iraq exported approximately 2.4m bpd under the
Oil-for-Food (OFF)
programme.
8.
The report
also stated that Iraq’s oil and gas infrastructure was in a
generally poor
state of
repair.
9.
A November
2002 Trade Partners UK (TPUK) paper advised that:
“…
exploration in Iraq is relatively immature and yet-to-find (YTF)
reserves have
been
estimated at between 50[bn] and 200bn barrels of oil. This
magnitude of
YTF reserves
is unmatched anywhere in the world.
…
“Based on
these reserves Iraq has the potential to be an extremely important
future
player in
the supply of oil and gas to world markets …
“Despite
the vast sums required to develop Iraq’s reserves, there is a great
deal of
interest
from International Oil Companies to become involved in this
[investment in
Iraq’s oil
infrastructure]. This is based on the fact that, although modern
technologies
will be
required to undertake the work, Iraq’s reserves are considered
amongst the
cheapest in
the world to develop, driven by having large, onshore fields with
simple
10.
Iraqi oil
production and revenues from oil exports for selected years between
1989
and 2009
are set out in Table 1, later in this Section.
1
Paper DIS,
18 January 2002, ‘Infrastructure Briefing Memorandum:
Iraq’.
2
Paper TPUK,
29 November 2002, ‘Note for Sir David Manning on UK Oil
Company Interests in Iraq’.
375