Rumaila, the biggest oilfield in Iraq capable of pumping about 1.5 million barrels per day (bpd), has seen its oil production cut by 300,000 bpd since a fire broke out at the huge field last week, an Iraqi oil official told Bloomberg on Monday.
Iraq currently does not have a timeline for a full recovery of crude oil production at Rumaila, Mohammed Al-Najjar, Iraq’s National Representative to OPEC, told Bloomberg.
A fire broke out on Friday at the Rumaila field, where BP and PetroChina have worked in recent years to boot production. The fire was quickly contained, the Iraqi oil ministry said on Friday.
The incident occurred in a decommissioned storage tank at the field’s fifth gas separation station (DS5) in northern Rumaila.
The Iraqi ministry said that the fire erupted due to “unidentified technical reasons,” adding that there were no staff were seriously injured.
Two of the local oil workers suffered minor burn injuries, three energy sources told Reuters. They also said on Friday that the fire had not affected field operations at Rumaila.
The Rumaila oilfield produces 1.5 million bpd of oil, or around a third of the crude oil pumped by OPEC’s second-largest producer after Saudi Arabia. Oil production at Rumaila has increased by 40% since 2010, BP says.
The UK supermajor, state-owned PetroChina, and Iraq’s state-held Basra Oil Company (BOC) have worked in partnership to develop Rumaila, which is the second-largest producing field in the world.
Rumaila is estimated to have around 17 billion barrels of recoverable oil remaining.
BP and PetroChina have established Basra Energy Company Limited (BECL), an incorporated joint venture (IJV). From June 2022, BECL has owned and managed its interests in the Rumaila field. BECL is expected to enable optimized and continued investment throughout the duration of the existing Technical Service Contract – due to expire at the end of 2034 – including enhanced access to external financing.
