Jeddah, Saudi Arabia — Iraq can revert to fuel-switching if the country loses or has reduced access to Iranian gas for its power needs, Iraq's oil minister Thamir al-Ghadhban told journalists on Sunday in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.
"We have stored quite a sizable stock of gasoil," Ghadhban said. "We do have in some of the gas-fired plants the capability of burning more liquids like fuel oil, gasoil, or crude oil, so we can convert any of those liquids [for power generation]."
At the moment, Iraq is burning around 70,000 b/d of crude for power generation purposes, Ghadhban said. Iranian gas supplies nearly 20% of Iraq's total gas-fired capacity, and gas is playing a growing role in the country's power generation mix -- now comprising around 55% of total power generation, compared with 20% in 2012, according to the US Energy Information Administration.
Ghadhban said earlier in the day that a decision by ExxonMobil to remove some of its staff from Iraq was "unacceptable nor justified." ExxonMobil is the frontrunner to be awarded the Southern Iraq Integrated Project, alongside PetroChina, but the removal of Exxon's staff from Iraq has "slowed the pace," Ghadhban said.
"We are expecting a representative from Exxon to arrive in Baghdad this week, then we'll see," Ghadhban said.
His comments came on the sidelines of the meeting of the Joint Ministerial Monitoring Committee. Ministers from OPEC, minus Iran, are meeting with allies led by Russia to discuss their current production cuts and whether to extend them, which are effectively removing around 1.2 million barrels/d of oil from the market.
--Miriam Malek, miriam.malek@spglobal.com
--Herman Wang, herman.wang@spglobal.com
--Edited by Claudia Carpenter, claudia.carpenter@spglobal.com