Recent news reports were replete with Iraq declaring its willingness to invest $15 billion into new gas-focused projects that could reduce its reliance on one of Baghdad’s long-standing problems, its gas imports. Baghdad has committed to an ambitious timeline of reaching self-sufficiency by 2024-2025, with several large-scale projects being developed simultaneously. The announced gas-boosting drive will encompass Total spearheading the revived $7 billion Common Seawater Supply Project (injecting desalinated water into Basrah fields and processing the freed-up gas), Sinopec developing the 4.5 TCf Mansuriyah gas field and another, yet unnamed, investor taking up the 5.6 TCf Akkas gas field. Concurrently to Iraq pushing forward with domestic gas production, Baghdad has also announced that it intends to revisit a long-forgotten pipeline project. Iraq’s oil minister Ihsan Abdul Jabbar claimed that there is an “imminent agreement” to import Syrian gas into Iraq on April 29. Later it was specified that all […]