The oil firms developing the Taq Taq oil field in Iraq's northern Kurdish region expect to boost initial production of 40,000 barrels per day to 60,000 bpd by November, company officials said on Saturday. The field, along with Tawke, will officially start pumping crude over the next two days in a major breakthrough in a feud between the Arab-led government in Baghdad and Kurds in their semi-autonomous northern enclave over Iraq's oil wealth. “Starting Monday, we will be able to produce 40,000 barrels per day from this facility, but starting in October, at the latest November, we will be able to produce 60,000 bpd,” said Mehmet Okutan, project manager for production at Taq Taq. Taq Taq is being jointly developed by oil and gas company Addax Petroleum and Turkey's Genel Enerji while Tawke is being developed by Norway's DNO International. The green light from the Shi'ite Muslim-led government in Baghdad to the oil sales was a major break in a long dispute. Baghdad has long insisted the Kurds do not have the right to make deals with private oil firms without its approval. It also opposes the production sharing agreements the Kurdistan Regional Government has signed with the firms and there remains uncertainty over how the KRG will pay Addax, Genel and DNO for the crude they pump. Crude from Taq Taq and from Tawke will be used for both domestic supply and for exports. Tawke is set to start pumping 60,000 bpd, Kurdish authorities say. Taq Taq's output will initially travel by truck and then be pumped into a pipeline to Turkey for export. The oil will be sold by Iraq's national State Oil Marketing Organisation (SOMO). Hal Schindler, drilling manager at Taq Taq for the Addax-Genel venture, said the companies were thinking about more than doubling the number of wells in the field from the current 11. The companies are considering drilling between 13 and 25 new wells, starting in three to nine months time, he said. The new wells would come on line in around three month intervals. “I think there is still a lot of potential here,” Schindler told reporters. The oil feud is part of a larger dispute between minority Kurds and majority Arabs over resources, land and power in Iraq that has held up passage of modern national oil legislation. Oil Minister Hussain al-Shahristani is facing rising pressure to increase sluggish oil output, now running at 2.3-2.4 million bpd, and turn around an industry in dire need of major investment after decades of sanctions, neglect and war. Developments in the energy standoff between the Kurdistan region and Baghdad are keenly watched, not just by oil firms eager to get a bite out of Iraq's underexploited oil reserves. Kurdish officials recently unveiled an $8 billion plan that could supply natural gas from Kurdistan to Europe via the Nabucco pipeline. But Shahristani has rejected the deal because it was done without participation from the oil ministry.
