Future of Oil in Kurdistan - Bright

The future of oil in Kurdistan

By Javier Blas in Erbil, northern Iraq

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I have spent the past few days touring the oil-rich semi-autonomous region of Kurdistan in northern Iraq, visiting oilfields and interviewing its officials and foreign executives. It is boom time for Kurdistan, which optimists hope could soon produce more oil than some members of Opec. As I am leaving, Kurdistan is celebrating thearrival of ExxonMobil, the first of the so-called supermajors to enter the territory to explore for oil.

But the future will not be a simple trajectory.

Exploration success. The oil and gas map of Kurdistan five years ago was largely blank. Today, dozens of oilfields dot it as companies discover hydrocarbons in commercial quantities in eight of every ten wells they drill. But drilling is not as easy as it appeared to be a few years ago, due to the complex geology of the region, and budgets are overrunning by more than a third in some cases.

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