LONDON
LUKOIL said on Tuesday that Iraq has not asked the Russian company to replace Exxon Mobil at its supergiant West Qurna-1 oilfield after the US major angered Baghdad by entering into autonomous Kurdistan.
Nefte Compass, a weekly energy newsletter about former Soviet states and Eastern Europe, said last week that Iraq was weighing whether to replace Exxon with Russia’s Lukoil and Gazprom Neft - both already involved in the country.
“No one has offered us West Qurna-1,” Lukoil Vice President Leonid Fedun told Reuters.
“We respect Exxon and the Iraqi government a lot. But we are simply lacking the financial resources to take on such large projects at the moment.” The northern Kurdish region has riled Baghdad by signing deals with foreign oil companies such as Exxon, Gazprom Neft, Total and Chevron - contracts the central government rejects as illegal.
Lukoil, Russia’s secondlargest crude producer, is already running a mega-project to develop Iraq’s supergiant West Qurna-2, which adjoins West Qurna-1 in the south. It holds a 75 percent stake in the project after buying out junior partner Statoil in June.
Chief Executive Vagit Alekperov said Lukoil was in no rush to find a new partner.
“We have interested parties from the Gulf and from China,” he told investors. “But we don’t feel pressed to sell a share in the project.” Alekperov said 23 wells would be drilled at the oilfield by the end of 2013. Lukoil is targeting an internal rate of return of 15 percent versus earlier expectations of 13 to 15 percent.
While Lukoil may be too stretched to tap West Qurna- 1, where Royal Dutch Shell has a minority stake, sources told Reuters Russia’s top oil company Rosneft may team up with Exxon in Iraq after the two struck a pact to tap oil and gas in the Arctic and North America.
Rosneft has declined to comment.
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