The second largest amount of proven oil reserves

The Energy Report for Monday, October 4, 2010

Who has the second largest amount of proven conventional oil reserves or easy to get to oil?

Iraq has announced that they will increase the amount of their proven oil reserves from mere 115 million barrels of oil to a whopping 143.1 billion barrels of oil putting them in second place in the world of cheap, easy to get to oil. Dow Jones reports that the figure, the first update since 2001, would mean Iraq has the world's second largest reserves according to statistics on the OPEC website. Iraq would take second place from Iran, which has 137.01 billion barrels of proven reserves, but would still be far behind Saudi Arabia, which has 264.59 billion barrels of proven oil reserves, according to OPEC figures.

These aren't random figures, rather they were the results of deep surveys carried out by the ministry's oil reservoir company and international companies which signed contracts with Iraq.

Dow Jones say that Iraq has signed 12 deals with international oil companies to ramp up output capacity to about 12 million barrels a day from around 2.4 million barrels a day now. BP PLC (BP), Exxon Mobil Corp. (XOM), Royal Dutch Shell PLC (RDSA), Lukoil Holdings (LKOH.RS), Eni SpA (E), Total SA (TOT), Japan Petroleum Exploration Co. Ltd. (1662.TO) and China National Petroleum Corp., or CNPC, have signed on to develop Iraq's vast oil fields. The largest Iraqi oil field was West Qurna. With total proven oil reserves of 43 billion barrels, it could be the world's second largest.

West Qurna is divided in two--Phase 1 and Phase 2. Exxon Mobil led a consortium and won a deal to develop Phase 1, while Lukoil led a consortium to develop Phase 2. Rumaila, which is being developed by BP and CNPC, is the second-largest Iraqi oil field, with total proven reserves of 17 billion barrels. Majnoon, which Shell won the right to develop, comes third with proven reserves of 11 billion barrels of oil.

The new reserve figure doesn't include the semi-autonomous region of Kurdistan in northern Iraq. The region's authorities have estimated reserves in their Kurdistan region to be around 40 billion barrels.

This is an amazing development. It has been said that one of the reasons that Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait was because it had coveted its oil, If he only would have taken the time to look around.

Disclosure: I own British Petroleum