Last week a small news item went largely unnoticed by the international media but it hints at the real – and until now unpublished – reason why ExxonMobil has not so far gone ahead with the Common Seawater Supply Project (CSSP), as part of the broader US$53 billion Southern Iraq Integrated Project (SIIP). The CSSP – involving taking seawater from the Persian Gulf and transporting it to oil production facilities to boost pressure at key oil reservoirs – is absolutely critical for Iraq’s ambitions to reach its next oil output targets of 6.2 million barrels per day (bpd) by end-2020 and 9 million bpd by end-2023. It also hints at why Iraq was so in debt for so long to various international oil companies (IOCs). The item in question was the legal ruling last week that oil services firm TechnipFMC (TFMC) – the product of a 2017 merger between […]