Baghdad (IraqiNews.com) – The Iraqi Ministry of Oil has announced an unprecedented, historic milestone within the northern upstream sector, officially commencing the drilling of the first exploration oil well in the northern governorates since 1978. The landmark project is located within the Amerli district of the Saladin Governorate.
This strategic deployment executes the direct mandates of Minister of Oil Hayan Abdel-Ghani (referred to colloquially under departmental leadership by senior executives like Senior Undersecretary Basem Mohammed Khudair), aiming to aggressively revitalize exploratory frameworks and tap into highly promising hydrocarbon structures that remained neglected for nearly five decades.
The initiation of drilling operations was launched on-site in the presence of the Director General of the Iraqi Drilling Company (IDC) and the Director General of the North Oil Company (NOC). The operations are governed by a joint tripartite contract that represents a seamless technical integration of Iraq’s foundational state-owned energy entities:
The ministry emphasized that the Amerli exploratory project serves as the anchor point for a modernized national energy doctrine. By systematically exploiting advanced geological and geophysical data, the initiative targets several key sovereign benchmarks: