MEOG: Iranian drilling and supplies for Jordan

This week’s MEOG looks at an Iranian drilling campaign and the renewal of an oil supply deal to Jordan.

The National Iranian Drilling Co. (NIDC) announced this week that it has started a 10-well campaign at the supergiant South Azadegan oilfield in the south of the country.

The programme includes the drilling and completion of wells under a subcontract from Petroleum Engineering and Development Co. (PEDEC), a subsidiary of the National Iranian Oil Co. (NIOC) which was awarded a $1.26bn contract alongside Petropars in 2020 for the first development phase at South Azadegan. This comprised the drilling of 35 wells, installing 50 downhole ESP pumps and completing eight manifolds.

10 of these wells were contracted to NIDC, with Petropars awarding the final 25 wells to Dana Energy and Tadbir Drilling Development Co. NIDC Chairman Hamidreza Golpayegani said this week that the Fath 28 and Fath 92 rigs had been allocated for the project.

Meanwhile, the Jordanian government this week agreed to renew an agreement to import 10,000 barrels per day (bpd) of Kirkuk crude from Iraq after the previous deal expired in January.

Hassan Hiari, assistant for energy affairs at Jordan’s Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources (MEMR), said that trucked consignments would resume in early April, noting that the parties had been in dialogue over the extension throughout February.

Under the terms of the pre-existing bilateral deal that was signed in February 2019, Iraq agreed to cover around 7% of Jordan’s oil demand (10,000 bpd), trucking crude from the Baiji refinery to the Jordanian border via Kirkuk, then on to the Zarqa refinery near Amman. After lengthy delays, the first batch of Iraqi crude was trucked from Baiji to Jordan via Kirkuk in September that year.