ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - The Norwegian oil firm DNO on Tuesday said its oil production in the Kurdistan Region’s Tawke oil field continues to climb, amid a continued halt on the Region’s oil exports due to an Iraq-Turkey arbitration row.
Turkey stopped the flow of Kurdish oil through the Iraq-Turkey pipeline after a Paris-based arbitration court on March 23 ruled in favor of Baghdad, saying Ankara had breached a 1973 pipeline agreement by allowing Erbil to begin independent oil exports in 2014. Despite several talks between Kurdish, Iraqi, and Turkish officials, oil exports remain suspended. As a result, many oil companies have halted production.
DNO “announced that gross production from its operated Tawke licenses in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq continues to climb, with the December to date average approaching 90,000 barrels of oil per day (bopd),” it said in a statement.
In August, DNO announced it had partially resumed the production of crude oil in the Tawke oil field in Duhok province, selling it to local companies.
The climb in oil production lifts the firm’s projected figures in the fourth quarter of 2023 to 65,000 bopd, which is an increase from 26,000 bopd produced in the third quarter, and zero production in the second quarter due to the halt in oil exports.
In the first quarter of 2023, DNO produced an average of 94,720 barrels per day, according to its figures.
The produced oil is sold to local buyers at prices in “low to mid-USD 30s per barrel,” the firm said, adding that it conditions advance payments in US dollars to “eliminate any risk of arrears build up.”
DNO Executive Chairman Bijan Mossavar-Rahmani expressed confidence in overcoming the challenges facing the company and reiterated its commitment to its endeavors in the Kurdistan Region.
“We remain confident that the latest challenges facing DNO and the other international oil companies will be resolved once again and we remain committed to growing our business in Kurdistan, as we have over the past two decades,” Mossavar-Rahmani said.
In the statement, the firm also announced that it plans to drill another well near Nineveh province’s Bashiqa town in 2024.
DNO produced an average of 107,637 barrels per day in 2022 in Tawke and Peshkabir oil fields, which amounted to nearly a quarter of the Kurdistan Region’s total exports.
