The American chief executive officer of Gulf Keystone Petroleum says that Kurdistan is on the verge of an oil boom.

The semi-autonomous region of 5.2 million people is completing a pipeline for direct crude exports to Turkey by the end of the year, bypassing central government authorities in Baghdad. The region’s reserves are as much as 45 billion barrels, the local administration estimates, enough to meet U.S. demand for almost seven years.

“Exports are what we’ve been waiting for since 2007, so the pipeline is very big and instrumental for a company like Gulf Keystone,” Kozel, 46, said in a telephone interview. “We are a public company, and consolidation is the next phase in Kurdistan. But that’s not in our plans now.”

“Gulf Keystone screens quite well as a takeover target once the risk around the court case is removed,” said James Gardiner, an analyst at Peel Hunt in London who gives the stock a buy rating. “They’re sitting on a giant oil field that wouldn’t look out of place in a major’s portfolio.”

Kozel said the company, which has spent $780 million in Kurdistan so far, will be able to fund the development of its fields with cash flow generated once production starts at an initial rate of 40,000 barrels a day this year.

“The Kurdistan Regional Government is very happy with our plans,” Kozel said. “We can develop Shaikan and our other fields better and possibly faster than others might.”

Gulf Keystone’s main asset, the Shaikan discovery, one of Kurdistan’s biggest ever, will produce 250,000 barrels a day by 2018, according to the company. That would increase Iraq’s total production by about 8 percent.



Soran Ali