The Iraqi Oil Ministry has cleared 47 companies, including heavyweights such as BP, Shell, Chevron, Statoil, Eni, Gazprom, Rosneft and Petronas, to bid for 12 blocks on offer in the country’s fourth licensing round, with awards set to land at the end of this month.
US supermajor ExxonMobil is though notably excluded from the list of bidders due to its involvement in Kurdistan after signing exploration deals last year with the northern semi-autonomous region that Baghdad has deemed illegal.
London-based
