Discovery: 1979.
Size: 16 km long and 6 km wide in the current Contract Area.
Quality: light crude oil close to brent blend with an API gravity of 34° to 35° and a sulphur content of 3 to 4 %.
Reserves: The Badra field holds oil-in-place reserves of 3 billion barrels (upward of 400 million tons).
In late 2009, the consortium of Gazprom Neft, Kogas (Korea), Petronas (Malaysia), and TPAO (Turkey) won the Iraqi Government’s contract for the development of the Badra field.
The field is operated by Gazprom Neft, which also owns 30% stake in the project in partnership with Korean Gas (KOGAS, 22.5%), Petronas (15% ), TPAO (7.5%) and Iraqi Oil Exploration Company (OEC, 25%).
The Badra field development project’s lifecycle is 20 years with a possible 5-year extension. The project investments are estimated at some $2 billion. Pursuant to the contract, the investors will be reimbursed for their costs and remunerated.
Field infrastructure includes a 123.5 MW independent gas-turbine power plant (GTPP), producing energy for all field equipment as well as more than 25 000 residents in the city of Badra and its suburbs.
The Badra project is a complex one, both in terms of its geology (the field could be imagined as a mille feuille, with alternating clay and limestone deposits, which makes drilling difficult) and in terms of its environmental problems: it was, until recently, a war zone, and almost 30,000 mines and bombs have had to be cleared and destroyed since work started on the project.
Not only oil and gas are now being produced here, but also granulated sulphur and electricity. Cutting-edge solutions have made it possible to ensure optimum environmental-friendliness on the project, with associated petroleum gas (APG) utilisation running at more than 98%. Total cumulative oil production at the Badra field reached more than 100 million barrels in 2019.
Badra is one of the most important elements of Iraq’s energy system. Dry commercial gas produced by Gazprom Neft is transported via a 100-km pipeline to the Az-Zubaidiya power station, where it is used to supply energy to several Iraqi provinces, including the country’s capital Baghdad.
