South Iraq’s Muthanna Province call for investment in its oil fields

MUTHANNA / IraqiNews.com: Southern Iraq ’s Muthnna’s Provincial Council has called on international oil companies to excavate for oil in its oil fields and invest in them charging the Oil Ministry with having ignored those fields in its licensing sessions.   “The Council has issued a decision in its meeting on Tuesday to call on international oil companies to excavate in the discovered oil fields in the Province, invest and develop them,” the Chairman of Muthanna Council’s Economy & Investment Committee told IraqiNews.com news agency.   “ Muthanna Province began to feel ignored by the Oil Ministry due to its non-attention towards those oil fields and non-consideration of Muthanna as an oil province,” Majid Abdulla Sadoud said.   Sadoud said that there were three oil fields in Muthanna desert, discovered since 1975, but were not developed and invested, and most outstanding of them was “Abu-Khuema” oil well, close to the Iraqi-Saudi-Kuwaiti triangle and al-Diwan and Dahsa wells, all within the Basma township, which represents 6% of Iraq’s total area and about 48% of the area of Muthanna, the second largest Province after Anbar.   He pointed out that “all facts point out to the existence of large quantities of oil reserves in Muthanna desert, despite non-existence of preliminary figures; but they were not invested in the past, but the issue is different nowadays.”   Samawa, the center of Muthanna Province , is 280 kms to the south of Baghdad .   SKH (RT) 605