TotalEnergies signed a $27 billion contract in 2023 to develop Iraq’s oil sector - the biggest foreign investment in the conflict-ridden country’s history - and the project is set to steer Iraq towards a more sustainable path, Dunia Chalabi, managing director of TotalEnergies Iraq, told Rudaw at the Iraq Development Platform conference in Baghdad.
The finalized deal saw TotalEnergies holding the lion’s share with a 45 percent stake in the Gas Growth Integrated Project (GGIP), followed by Iraqi state-owned Basra Oil Company with 30 percent, and QatarEnergy with 25 percent.
The following is the transcript of the interview with Dunia Chalabi:
Rudaw: Dunia Chalabi, TotalEnergies Iraq Director. Welcome to Rudaw.
Thank you for having me.
TotalEnergies contract with Iraq was big news, $27 billion. Big money. What are the latest updates?
First of all, thank you for having me here. It's a pleasure to be talking to you about this really, very strategic and important and huge multi-energy project. Why strategic and important? First of all, As you know it was ratified in 2023, and from then on, we were then by late 2023 we became officially operator of the field that we are currently working on. Why strategic? Because it's a multi-energy project which encompasses the capture and processing of associated gas turned into electricity, the introduction of new energies, new solar power into Iraq. The production of oil which I am talking about as being operator and the treatment of salt water from the sea, sea water, into water that can be used for industrial purposes, thus freeing up water for agricultural and human use. And I would say the scale of these projects is unique for the company, TotalEnergies, but also for Iraq because it's a synchronized venture which will, by 2027, bring in a lot of energy to the Iraqi people. We will have one gigawatt from the solar panels. We will have an extra one and a half gigawatts from the gas processing plant. We will have a cleaner way of developing oil and we will, as I said, free up some water for industrial use and free up for human use. Where are we since this past year? We became operator. We have BOC as our partners. We have QatarEnergy as our partners as well. And we are governed by something which we call the Joint Management Committee, which is headed by the Vice Minister of Oil of the Ministry of Oil here in Baghdad. And so far we finished 2024, we finished all the preparations, the studies, the feeds, the bidding so that we are in 2025, ready to be able to launch it. And that's exactly what we did. We added a fifth project, a small intermediate project. that will capture 50 million scf of flared gas from the Artawi field. And so we will have an Artawi field that will be able, by the end of this year, will be able to produce with as little CO2 as possible. So we had a groundbreaking ceremony. Beginning of January, we're launching it. We're launching equally, we're going to launch the bigger gas processing plant to process 300 million scuffs of associated gas from three fields. And also, we will be producing more and launching the first 250 megawatts of solar power into the national grid. So all in all, you will be having in 2025 a very good production of TotalEnergies and its partners in Iraq.
So everything is going well by plan?
Everything is going on schedule. We have an army full of people working. We're working across continents. We're working hand-in-hand with the Iraqi authorities, obviously our partners, and the oil ministry of course and we are really playing it as one team for one goal. Our purpose is to achieve this big project in time as agreed to make sure that there is access to energy, to make sure that we employ and hire as many Iraqis as possible, that we stick to the contract obviously and the contract is pretty binding as you know, and that we make it, we ensure that we leave a much better place of what we found before
So I was listening to the officials from the oil ministry and they are pretty much positive about that Iraq is going to stop gas flaring in the next five years. So they are relying on what you do pretty much.
Well, we're contributing to that. Our … The purpose of this multi-energies is multifold. Obviously reducing the CO2 footprint, reducing flaring, gas flaring, reducing it as much as possible. The second thing is to provide access to energy, electricity, and cleaner electricity and accompany the government for the energy transition it is embracing. The third is to also have a full multi-deployment of a multi-energies strategy which basically will be able to allow the country to go in a sustainable way on different paths and sub-sectors of the energy sector. And last but not least, it is for us a very strategic, as a company, a strategic project because it has this multi-energy dimension, that is part of our new strategy but also we're coming back to a country where we were born as a country … as a company, sorry … so we have hand in hand the concoction of many, the concomitance of circumstances that are very positive, very much in the sustainability axis, and very much in cooperation with the Iraqi partners and Qatari partners.
Well, it's not just you that's coming back to where you were born. BP [British Petroleum] is coming back too.
Correct.
Thank you, Dunia. A pleasure to have you.
Same here.
Thanks a lot.
Thank you.
