American companies have signed agreements and partnerships worth about $60 billion with the Iraqi government, including deals aimed at creating alternative routes for transporting oil from the Persian Gulf, writes the Associated Press (AP).
The signing of the documents took place at the US Chamber of Commerce in Washington shortly after a meeting between Iraqi Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi and the management of the Chevron oil company in Houston, Texas. At the meeting, the head of the Iraqi government called on the American energy giant to expand its activities and accelerate investments.
In addition to Chevron, American oil companies ConocoPhillips, HKN Energy and Halliburton entered into agreements with the Iraqi authorities on Thursday, July 16, The Hill reports. Agreements were also reached in other areas involving telecom giant Cisco, financial conglomerate JPMorgan, satellite communications company Starlink and food maker PepsiCo.
“Our challenge in the Middle East is to transform a region torn by conflict. We want to stop them and replace them with trade relations,” US Energy Secretary Chris Wright noted when signing the agreements.
Jake Spearing, Chevron's president of corporate business development, said two agreements are aimed at increasing oil production, and the third involves “investing in a pipeline that will create another export route from Iraq to world markets,” the AP reports. This is “very important for energy security,” Spearing added.
The initiative to restore the Kirkuk-Baniyas oil pipeline between Iraq and Syria, which RTVI previously wrote about, was also commented on by the US State Department. They called the project, which will be carried out by American companies, a priority and “of bilateral and regional strategic importance.”
All participants in the project recognize the strategic importance of restoring the energy corridor connecting Iraqi oil fields with export markets in the Mediterranean and other regions, the American foreign policy department emphasized.
“The United States welcomes the participation of a US-led international consortium in implementing the technical and financial aspects of this project. Once restored, this innovative project will have an initial throughput capacity of 2 million barrels of crude oil per day,” the State Department said.
Let us recall that on Tuesday, July 14, al-Zaidi, at a meeting with US President Donald Trump in the Oval Office, announced cooperation between Baghdad and Washington in the field of oil production and welcomed the expansion of the activities of American companies in Iraq. The head of the White House also assessed this positively, since the route will avoid using the Strait of Hormuz for transporting energy resources, which will reduce the influence of Iran, with which the United States is engaged in an armed conflict.
In July, air strikes resumed between the parties to the conflict, and the United States reimposed a naval blockade in the Strait of Hormuz, through which 20% of the world's oil and gas supplies pass.
US oil prices continued their summer gains and ended the week up 16% to $82.49 a barrel as producers from the Middle East to West Texas do not expect the waterway to return to normal operations soon, The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) writes.
“Meanwhile, American oil companies deployed seven more drilling rigs [в Техасе]bringing their total number to 452, which is 11% more than at the beginning of May,” the business publication clarifies.
