“TAQA enters into definitive agreements with General Exploration Partners Inc. for the sale of its interest in the Atrush oil field in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq,” the company said in a bourse filing on the Abu Dhabi Securities Exchange (ADX).
The stake will be acquired by ShaMaran Petroleum, a Canadian oil development and exploration company operating in the Kurdistan Region that previously held a 27.6 interest in the Atrush block. It will then sell 25 percent of the share to the US energy company HKN Energy.
“This transaction continues ShaMaran’s consolidation strategy in Kurdistan. We are acquiring TAQA’s 47.4% interest in Atrush and selling a 25% interest and operatorship to HKN IV,” ShaMaran’s President Garrett Soden said in a statement.
The transaction with HKN Energy is subject to approval by the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) which owns the remainder 25 percent of the shares, according to ShaMaran.
The Abu Dhabi National Energy Company, known as TAQA, is an energy and water company operating in 11 countries. It previously held a majority 47.4 percent share in Atrush and in July 2019, broke the Kurdistan Region’s record and registered a production of over one million barrels of oil.
Oil exports from the Kurdistan Region through the Iraq-Turkey pipeline have been halted since March after a Paris-based arbitration court ruled in favor of Baghdad against Ankara, saying the latter had breached a 1973 agreement by allowing Erbil to begin independent oil exports in 2014.
The halt in exports has caused the Iraqi and Kurdish government billions of dollars in losses.
Erbil and Baghdad have held numerous meetings since the ruling intended at taking measures to resume the exports but international oil companies (IOCs) operating in the Kurdistan Region have not been invited to most of the talks.
On Sunday, the KRG’s natural resources ministry invited IOCs in the Region to discuss progress in talks with the federal government on resuming oil exports.
Before the halt, around 400,000 barrels of oil a day were being exported by Erbil through Ankara, in addition to some 75,000 barrels of federally-controlled oil from Kirkuk province.
The loss in oil revenues, the KRG’s main source of income, has worsened the financial situation and left the government unable to pay its public sector without assistance from Baghdad.
