Iraqi Oil Minister Abdul-Karim Luaibi appeared Thursday before parliament's Oil and Energy Committee to answer questions about the recent oil and gas exploration round after calls from some politicians for its postponement.
Iraq on April 25 offered 12 exploration blocks to international oil companies.
"Last week we sent a letter from the oil and energy committee to the oil minister to meet to discuss a main issue which is about the fourth bidding round and whether it is necessary for Iraq in this time," said committee member Baizeid Hasan after the meeting with Luaibi.
"It is the will of the committee to host the oil minister after recent calls to postpone in order to concentrate on the first, second and third bidding rounds," he told reporters, adding that Iraq expected to produce 12 million b/d by 2017 from the fields awarded to foreign contractors.
An Iraqi website reported last week that the committee had urged the ministry to postpone the fourth round.
"The committee has made a formal request to the Ministry of Oil asking them to delay the awarding of licenses," AKnews reported quoting committee chairman Adnan al-Janabi.
He said the absence of a federal hydrocarbon law meant there was no clear structure for exploration contracts.
"The Oil and Energy Committee hopes the oil and gas law will be approved as soon as possible and that those looking to block it for political reasons understand how hard it is for the ministry to carry out their work without the law and the formation of a federal council," he said.
Luaibi made no comment to reporters after the committee meeting but Hasan said the minister explained that the fourth round was purely for exploration in order to boost reserves.
Awards for exploration contracts to qualified companies are expected in January.
Hasan said that a federal oil and gas law may be approved by parliament by then.
A draft federal hydrocarbon law has been held up for years because of disputes between Baghdad and the Kurdistan Regional Government over some of its clauses. Erbil has said that it hopes resolution of a dispute over payments to foreign contractors operating in Iraqi Kurdistan would help smooth passage of the draft law through parliament.
Iraq is hoping that the exploration round will raise its oil reserves by 10 billion barrels and gas by 29 Tcf.
Iraq late last year raised its crude oil reserve estimate to 143 billion barrels and officials have said that reserves could be double the previous estimate of 115 billion barrels if the country were properly explored.
With upstream oil projects currently under way, Iraq has made clear it is more interested in exploiting its untapped gas potential.
Iraq has signed 12 oil field development contracts with international companies including ExxonMobil, BP, Shell, Eni, Lukoil and the Chinese National Petroleum Corp. since late 2009, and plans to increase oil production capacity from 2.7 million b/d now to more than 13 million b/d in seven years.
