Project Profile

Value: US$100 million
Location: 50 km to the east of Erbil, Kurdistan, Iraq
Reserves: unknown
Area: 247 km2
Start-up Year: 2015

The project will see the exploration and then development of an exploration block in Kurdistan Region of Iraq. Bina Bawi structure is a single surface anticline located about 50 km to the east of Erbil. The stucture is at 22 km North of the producing Taqtaq oil field. In 2006, Petoil, through its wholly owned affiliate A&T Petroleum Co. Ltd., entered into another Exploration and Production Sharing Agreement (EPSA) covering 247 km2 of the Bina Bawi structure. A&T and its partner Hawler Energy (Prime Natural Resources) initially had 50% interest each in the EPSA. In 2008, a new PSC was negotiated and entered into, in order to bring the terms and conditions of the EPSA in line with the new Petroleum Law of the Kurdistan Region. Petoil acted as the operator of the PSC until late 2010. The operatorship has been transferred to the new entrant, OMV, in August 2010 and Petoil’s share in the licence was revised to 23%. Currently OMV is the operator, holding a 36% stake. OMV\'s partners included Genel, with a 44% stake, and the Kurdistan Regional Government, which has 20%. In 2015, Genel Energy signed an agreement with OMV to buy its 36 percent operated stake in the field.

A geological field study, a gravity and magnetic survey and an environmental baseline study have been carried out over the agreement area in 2006. First exploratory well, Bina Bawi-1, was drilled in 2007 and encountered significant oil shows of 35°API and tested 6 mmscfpd gas. The second exploratory well, Bina Bawi-2, was drilled to test the shallow oil shows encountered in the first well, but the well was plugged and abandoned due to technical reasons. A total of 242 km 2D seismic was acquired in 2008. Bina Bawi-3 spudded in early 2011 encountered hydrocarbons in one of the primary reservoir targets (Jurassic Mus Fm). The well drilling is still ongoing and further investigations are planned in the course of the well operations. Such investigations include evaluation of deeper potential targets in Triassic reservoirs with an expectation of discovering significant quantities of natural gas.


Operator:

Genel Energy: Operator with 80% interest

Kurdistan Regional Government: 20% interest