Power Company of Abu Dhabi has planned to supply electricity to the oil sector of Southern Iraq. This will help the fuel exploration of the nation in a more systematic manner.
Abu Dhabi National Energy or Taqa is anticipating the announcement of the power project in Southern Iraq.
Frank Perez, Taqa’s executive officer has illustrated that they are working on project with their partners and so far everything is going good. In the southern sector mainly, gas and oil are the two major fuels present. To exploring these crude forms of energy, the Iraq needs seamless power supply for providing proper work infrastructure. Construction of some energy supplying plants is going on at this place presently.
Taqa is quite experienced in providing this service as previously it had worked in the northern Iraq or Kurdistan area, where it had supplied 1000 megawatt energy. However the work in the south is going on in the opposite direction and many companies have withdrawn their participation in oil exploration, such as ExxonMobil, Chevron and Total. They lost their contracts due to indulging into agreement with semi autonomous Kurdistan Regional Government.
Royal Dutch Shell, BP and China National Petroleum Corporation have come into the picture in recent days and they have taken the initiative of oil exploration in the gigantic oilfields of the South. Pumping barrels are expected to be increased from today's 3.3 million barrels per day (bpd) to as much as 12 million by 2020.
Baghdad is also enforcing a blacklisting policy for those companies which have signed the deals with Kurdistan. Though, the contractors are not been penalized, just a formal blacklisting order has been imposed. At this very moment Taqa is at a very delicate situation. Though it holds 1/5th stakes in WesternZagros, the company acting over the pump control in Kurdistan.
David cook, the executive officer of Taqa for oil and gas, has given up his seat on the context of involvement of WesternZagros. Taqa’s right to name another director will come into the play now.
Mr Perez said in his interview that Taqa is certainly supporting both activities. Taqa is planning to set up subsidiary in Iraq o build the nation’s power grid. Peter Barker-Homek added that the name of the subsidiary will be Taqa Babylon. The total amount of investment is around 100 Million US Dollars.
In 2009, Mr Barker-Homek left the company and the reason was the shifting of strategy from far-flung acquisitions in Canada and the Caribbean to regional expansion.
Building plants in local communities is not so safer in comparison to supplying power in the oil majors, said by Mr Perez.
The joint venture of Taqa in Kurdish town of Sulemanieh is keeping a steady a growth. Taqa is targeting to replace 500MW by 100MW, which will bring pace, as well as efficiency in the overall process of fuel exploration.
For Kurdistan Regional Government, power supply to central Iraq is also a matter of possibility. It was noted that last year Kurdish had supplied power to the Kirkuk, a neighboring state of Kurdistan and a small province of central Iraq.
Abu Dhabi has engaged itself into an agreement recently with Ankara with the Turkish for power generation and mining development.
Through investing in Taqa and Turkey’s Electricity Generation, Government hopes that it will complete the negotiations that are suggested from govt.’s side into the agreement.
Carl Sheldon, the chief executive of Taqa stated that Turkey is keen on FDI or foreign direct investments and has significant dynamic growth in last few years.
Source [The National]