Kirkuk Field is an oilfield in

Kirkuk Kirkuk ( ar, كركوك, ku, کەرکووک, translit=Kerkûk, , tr, Kerkük) is a city in Iraq, serving as the capital of the Kirkuk Governorate, located north of Baghdad. The city is home to a diverse population of Turkmens, Arabs, Kurds ...

, Iraq. It was discovered by the

Turkish Petroleum Company The Iraq Petroleum Company (IPC), formerly known as the Turkish Petroleum Company (TPC), is an oil company that had a virtual monopoly on all oil exploration and production in Iraq between 1925 and 1961. It is jointly owned by some of the world's ...

at Baba Gurgur in 1927. The oilfield was brought into production by the Iraq Petroleum Company (IPC) in 1934 when 12-inch pipelines from Kirkuk (British-ruled Mandatory Iraq) to

Haifa Haifa ( he, חֵיפָה ' ; ar, حَيْفَا ') is the third-largest city in Israel—after Jerusalem and Tel Aviv—with a population of in . The city of Haifa forms part of the Haifa metropolitan area, the third-most populous metropol ...

(

Mandatory Palestine Mandatory Palestine ( ar, فلسطين الانتدابية '; he, פָּלֶשְׂתִּינָה (א״י) ', where "E.Y." indicates ''’Eretz Yiśrā’ēl'', the Land of Israel) was a geopolitical entity established between 1920 and 1948 ...

) and Tripoli (French-ruled Greater Lebanon) were completed. It has ever since remained the most important part of northern Iraqi oil production with over of proven remaining oil reserves in 1998. After about seven decades of operation, Kirkuk still produces up to , almost half of all Iraqi oil exports. Oil from the Kirkuk oilfield is now exported through the Kirkuk-Ceyhan Oil Pipeline, which runs to the Turkish port of Ceyhan on the

Mediterranean Sea The Mediterranean Sea is a sea connected to the Atlantic Ocean, surrounded by the Mediterranean Basin and almost completely enclosed by land: on the north by Western and Southern Europe and Anatolia, on the south by North Africa, and on ...

. Some analysts believe that poor

reservoir A reservoir (; from French ''réservoir'' ) is an enlarged lake behind a dam. Such a dam may be either artificial, built to store fresh water or it may be a natural formation. Reservoirs can be created in a number of ways, including contr ...

-management practices during the

Saddam Hussein Saddam Hussein ( ; ar, صدام حسين, Ṣaddām Ḥusayn; 28 April 1937 – 30 December 2006) was an Iraqi politician who served as the fifth president of Iraq from 16 July 1979 until 9 April 2003. A leading member of the revolutio ...

years may have seriously, and even permanently, damaged Kirkuk's oilfield. One example showed an estimated of excess fuel oil being reinjected. Other problems include refinery residue and gas-stripped oil. Fuel oil reinjection has increased oil

viscosity The viscosity of a fluid is a measure of its resistance to deformation at a given rate. For liquids, it corresponds to the informal concept of "thickness": for example, syrup has a higher viscosity than water. Viscosity quantifies the int ...

at Kirkuk making it more difficult and expensive to get the oil out of the ground. On 11 July 2014 Kurdistan Regional Government forces seized control of the Kirkuk oilfield, together with the Bai Hassan field, prompting a condemnation from Baghdad and a threat of "dire consequences," if the oilfields were not returned to Iraq's control. In the aftermath of the Kurdish Referendum, as part of 2017 Iraqi–Kurdish conflict, the control of the oil fields, along with almost all of Kirkuk Governorate, returned to the government of Iraq.

References

Kirkuk Kirkuk Governorate Oil fields of Iraq {{iraq-stub

See also

References