Iraq hands Muthanna seismic work to two Chinese contractors

Iraq’s Oil Exploration Co. (OEC) has awarded back-to-back seismic survey contracts to two Chinese state-linked firms, according to statements from the Ministry of Oil’s Government Communication and Media Division. The deals, signed with ZhenHua Oil and Sinopec, cover acreage in Al-Muthanna governorate tied to Baghdad’s most recent bid rounds.

The first contract, signed on July 15 at OEC headquarters, engages ZhenHua Oil to carry out seismic acquisition on the Abu Khaimah programme, one of the blocks offered under the fifth-annex and sixth licensing rounds (LR5+ and LR6). A day later, on July 16, the company signed a parallel deal with Sinopec for the Adan 2D seismic programme in the same governorate and under the same licensing framework.

Both signings took place under the patronage of Oil Minister Basem Mohammed Khudair, with Deputy Minister for Extraction Affairs Naseer Aziz and OEC Director General Osama Rauf Hussein in attendance, the ministry said.

The Adan and Abu Khaimah surveys form part of a broader push by the ministry to widen seismic coverage across underexplored areas of southern and central Iraq using what officials described as “the latest global technologies”. OEC said the resulting datasets would sharpen the evaluation of geological structures and supply the technical basis for developing the fields and exploration blocks put on offer in the two most recent tenders.

LR5+ and LR6 were held in 2024 and drew unusually strong Chinese participation, with firms from the country sweeping the bulk of the awards while Western majors largely stayed on the sidelines. The latest OEC contracts extend that pattern into the upstream services layer, placing Chinese contractors at the front end of Iraq’s next exploration cycle as well as its development phase.

OEC framed both agreements as milestones for the domestic exploration sector, stressing that the tie-ups with ZhenHua and Sinopec would channel “the transfer of expertise and modern technologies to national personnel” and lift the technical capabilities of Iraqi crews. The company said co-operation with specialised international firms remained central to the sustainable development of the country’s oil sector.

The Muthanna acreage sits in a lightly drilled belt on the fringe of Iraq’s prolific southern basins, and successful seismic delineation there is regarded within the ministry as key to expanding the reserve base beyond the mature Basra fields. Neither contract value nor timeline for delivery of the processed data was disclosed by the ministry.