Oil Experts See Long-Term Risks to Iraq Reserves

[coda]

Top Stories - The New York Times

Oil Experts See Long-Term Risks to Iraq Reserves
Sat Nov 29, 2:35 PM ET Add Top Stories - The New York Times to My Yahoo!


By JEFF GERTH The New York Times

As the Bush administration spends hundreds of millions of dollars to repair the pipes and pumps above ground that carry Iraq (news - web sites)'s oil, it has not addressed serious problems with Iraq's underground oil reservoirs, which American and Iraqi experts say could severely limit the amount of oil those fields produce.

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Experts familiar with Iraqi's oil industry have said that years of poor management have damaged the fields, and some warn that the current drive to rapidly return the fields to prewar capacity runs the risk of reducing their productivity in the long run.

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Oil experts working for the United Nations found that some reservoirs in the southern part of Iraq "may only have ultimate recoveries of between 15 percent and 25 percent of the total oil" in the field, as compared to an industry norm of 35 percent to 60 percent.


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Edward C. Chow, a former Chevron executive who is now a visiting scholar with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, estimates it will cost $20 billion to restore Iraqi production to prewar levels, an amount that is more than double the administration's plan for oil reconstruction needs over the next four years.



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[The Backlash Cometh]

1. And they're just beginning to realize this now, are they?

Good thing it's early in the morning. My tear ducts aren't working yet. Here's a novel idea: "Diplomacy would have been cheaper in the long-run"