On Monday, Iraq's giant southern West Qurna-2 oilfield and wrecked offices have experienced the protests from hundreds of protestors, in demand of jobs as revealed by police and employees of the field.
West Qurna-2 oilfield is under the supervision of Russian Lukoil, which has not been started oil production in this field yet. Officials from Lukoil stated that company’s infrastructural development plan in this oilfield is getting hampered by the protestors.
Southern Oil Company, which is a state-run oil company, stated that so far they have not experienced any disturbance in this oilfield and the production is going on at its normal pace.
Oil Ministry of Iraq explained that such incident will lead to increment of security at the oilfields. Oil production is presently important for Iraq and it is the key for economic success of the company, as stated by the Oil Ministry.
140,000 barrels per day is expected from this oilfield of Iraq by the end of this year. An Iraqi police officer illustrated that army was called to enact as the protestors damaged many assets, including surveillance cameras of the oilfield.
Source also claimed that at least 400 protestors were there and when they broke into oilfield, foreign and national officials moved from there to a safer zone. Protestors destroyed the office of an Iraqi company, which was hired by Samsung Engineering. Before that the protestors also broke into the South Korean builder's headquarters and random stones were thrown to the main gate of headquarter.
West Qurna employee told that protestors were on rampage. They are asking for getting jobs and seeing them to become violent with their protest moves, we left the field to save ourselves. For building crude facilities at West Qurna-2, Samsung became one of the major contractors with Lukoil. West Qurna-2 has been identified as world’s 2nd largest undeveloped oil field, having oil reserve capacity of around 14 billion barrels.
Lukoil made a contract with Samsung, which is worth 998 million USD and the contract consists of building a tank farm, an oil export pipeline, a power station, gas processing plant, an oil gathering system and a water supply system. Oil Ministry of Iraq concluded that the ministry will take this incident with seriousness and will reinforce the security of the West Qurna field.
Updated 08 Mar 2013 | Soruce: Reuters |