One of several decisions taken by Iraq’s cabinet in a bid to keep the lights on in the wake of dwindling imports of Iranian gas (MEES, 14 July), has seen the country’s cabinet on 11 July “approve the purchase of quantities of gas from the Khor Mor gas field in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq by [the federal] Ministry of Oil.”

The 500mn cfd field is operated by the UAE’s Crescent Petroleum and Dana Gas on behalf of the Pearl Petroleum consortium and is the largest non-associated gas field in Iraq, providing crucial gas feedstock to Kurdistan’s power plants.

Baghdad’s decision comes as a boon to both Khor Mor’s ongoing and future expansion plans and is a radical change to previous politics that had long obstructed ambitions to bring the field’s gas output south.

The Pearl consortium aims to complete a 250mn cfd expansion project by Q2 2024, which will boost Khor Mor output to 750mn cfd (MEES, 19 May). Another 250mn cfd unit has also been planned, taking capacity potentially to 1bn cfd, although last year’s putative late-2024/early-2025 start date will most likely be pushed further (MEES, 11 February 2022).

In the past, officials from Dana and Crescent have both stated that Khor Mor volumes could be ‘exported’ to federal Iraq either directly, by re-purposing an existing condensate pipeline to Kirkuk’s Jambur field, or indirectly, by delivering gas to power plants in Kurdistan which would then supply electricity to northern Iraqi provinces.