By Christian Doumit
The Star (Jordan)
26 February 1998
http://archives.star.arabia.com/980226/OP1.html ...Although developments in Iraq have been on hold due to UN sanctions, the country's huge resource base will lead to oil production being the biggest in the world. While current proven recoverable oil reserves in Iraq are stated officially at 112 billion barrels, recent exploration activity suggests that total potential oil reserves could amount to between 350-400 billion barrels.
This is larger than the stated reserves in Saudi Arabia which are 250 billion barrels. According to Oil Market Trends, the distribution of proven reserves is that 76% are found in Cretaceous, 23.9% in Tertiary, and only 0.1% in the Jurassic and Triassic. This abnormally low percentage of oil reserves in the Jurassic and Triassic formation is due to the limited number of exploration wells that penetrated those depths and not because of lack of oil. Recent deep drilling has confirmed the presence of light crude oil in deeper formations. Iraq's proven natural gas reserves were estimated in 1997 at 3.36 TCM...
Iraq and the Future of World Oil
Fadhil J. Chalabi
Middle East Policy
Volume VII October 2000 Number 4
http://www.mepc.org/journal/0010_chalabi.htm Dr. Chalabi is the executive director of the Centre for Global Energy Studies in London.
Iraq's dormant oil potential is so huge that once it is activated and released it could cause drastic changes in world oil and energy politics. Iraq's present recoverable reserves, amounting to 112 billion barrels (bbl), are more than enough to sustain production at Iraq's pre-U.N.-sanctions levels for over 100 years. But this is not all. A very in-depth study undertaken by the Centre for Global Energy Studies (CGES) tries to prove that reserves yet to be discovered exceed those known to be recoverable. Accordingly, a totally rehabilitated and sanctions-free Iraq could expand its production capacity way beyond 8 million barrels per day (mb/d), easily reaching 10 mb/d, and theoretically even 12 mb/d under certain conditions , when U.N. sanctions are lifted or Iraq is allowed to develop oil under Security Council resolution 1284...
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