Petronas stops Iraq output, evacuates Malaysian nationals over Covid-19 fears

Malaysia’s national oil company Petronas on Wednesday confirmed it has shut down production and safely evacuated all of its Malaysian employees from Iraq because of the coronavirus.

“In view of the Covid-19 pandemic and as a precautionary measure to ensure the health, safety and wellbeing of our employees, we has safely evacuated all 80 of our Malaysian employees from Petronas Carigali Iraq Holding (PCIHBV) located at the Garraf contract area, in the Thi Qar province, Republic of Iraq,” the company said.

“This is certainly an unfortunate and unforeseeable event that is not within PCIHBV’s control,” said Petronas.

PCIHBV had engaged with the Iraqi authorities and issued the necessary notice in accordance with the provisions of its Development and Production Service Contract prior to suspending operations at Gharraf and evacuating its employees.

Petronas added it is also closely monitoring the situation.

As of 18 March, Iraq had 164 reported cases of Covid-2 and two reported deaths.

The Garraf DPSC was signed in January 2010 between Iraq’s South Oil Company (SOC), Petronas Carigali, Japan Petroleum Exploration Company (Japex) and North Oil Company.

SOC subsequently assigned its rights and obligations under the DPSC to Thi-Qar Oil Company.

Production start-up from the initial development phase at the asset was in August 2013.

The Garraf contract area is located onshore in the province of Thi Qar, approximately 250 kilometres southeast of Baghdad and 275 kilometres northwest of Basra.