» Home » Business News Iraq Directory Services Plans Subscription Contact us Site Map Help About Iraq Majnoun oilfield in Basra doubles its production to 100K barrels a day Basra - Workers in South Oil Company are continuing in erecting and operating modern technological equipments, which were contracted to be supplied by Italian and French companies, in the very significant Majnoun oil well. This participates in doubling the current production to 100 thousand barrels a day, within the first stage of the local investment of the well. Jabbar Ali al Lo'eibi, an oil expert and general manager of South Oil Company, told Al Sharq Al Awsat that the equipments that reached the work sites, which the company workers started to erect and operate some of, have included insulations, pumps, control units, electrical transformers, switchboards and towers that would participate, after they are done, in increasing the production capacity of the well by 40 thousand barrels of crude oil a day, so that the total production of the well would be 100 thousand barrels a day. This is done through local investment, without making use of any foreign operating expertise, which demanded huge budgets. He confirmed that Majnoun field, which is considered as among the richest oil wells in the world, has a certain oil reserve between 23 and 25 billion barrels. It was called "Majnoun" (Crazy) due to the crazy supply it has of crude oil under a limited area of land in Tigris River region, in front of Al Qarna city. Investing it started by the mid 70s of the last century but it stopped due to the Iraqi-Iranian war in 1980, as it was close to the military front, which led the company to bury the wells dug in it for fear of the eruption of fires and wasting the oil resources. Afterwards, the company resumed work in the field and managed, in the last few years to reach 60 thousand barrels a day of its production, despite the concession of wars. He pointed out that global companies continue making offers to invest it during the past two years. Nevertheless, the company cadres are continuing in locally developing and investing the field with the available national budget and expertise. Engineer Qusai Tarek, the site official, added that the percentage of the achieved works has reached more than 70% so far. In addition to aiming at increasing oil production, this aims at extracting sulfur from crude oil. A modern extractor is extracting H2S substance that accompanies oil. He noted that the works that are being executed included the erection of electrical pumps on Shat-el-Arab, to supply the sources with necessary water for the field stations, to establish two tanks for running oil from the main station, establishing 5 basins for valves, erecting high pressure and another low pressure stations, and capacity motors. Source: Asharq Al-Awsat © 2002-2004 Iraq Directory - All Rights Reserved