The UK’s Foreign & Commonwealth Office is planning a new consulate general compound, with office, residential accommodation and buildings services, in Erbil, Kurdistan Region, Iraq.
It is not known how far down the Iraqi approvals pipeline this application has reached. Meantime the Chinese have just been given clearance to set up shop in the ancient Kurdish capital.
The purpose of the FCO project is to provide a “purpose built flexible new” facility “from which to deliver Her Majesty’s Government’s objectives in Erbil, KRG, Iraq.”
Expectation is that oil and gas-related business will figure large in those objectives, including assisting London-listed players such as Gulf Keystone and Petroceltic.
The former is said to have billions of barrels of heavy-through-medium and light crudes to its account and has been producing modest quantities from its Shaikan field for local consumption via prolonged well tests and most recently via one of two production centres, though the second is also supposed to be ready for business around now.
However, on December 31, news broke via Reuters that Shaikan crude was being sold on to the world market for the first time.
Trucked through Turkey to a waiting tanker, the sale of Shaikan crude comes just ahead of planned exports of light crude from another field, Taq Taq, via a new pipeline.
Reuters reported that trading company Powertrans, an intermediary used by the KRG to export its oil from Turkey, has sold a 30,000-tonne (200,000 barrels approx) cargo of Shaikan crude loading this week (January 6-10).
Shaikan commercial production began in July 2013 with an initial capacity of 10,000 barrels per day (bpd) and output is supposedly to reach 40,000bpd early this year.
By contrast, Petroceltic with Hess has yet to declare that they have struck oil and/or gas at Shakrok, which is currently drilling, though there encouraging noises about a possible well-test are being made.
It possibly helps the UK’s case that KRG’s natural resources minister Ashti Hawrami worked in the North Sea for a time and is familiar with Aberdeen and therefore the capabilities of the supply chain resident within.
The KRG has cannily defied jealous Baghdad and ploughed ahead with its own oil and gas resources development programme, including a milestone deal with Turkey which guarantees potentially multiple export routes to world markets.