The two parties signed a two-year memorandum of cooperation covering the evaluation of potential oil and gas projects and human resource development in Kurdistan, northern Iraq.
Under the agreement, they will undertake a joint six-month study, mostly from Perth, using existing data on two fields to identify viable oil and gas projects.
"Iraq holds the world's third largest oil and gas reserves and Kurdistan is a relatively underexplored part of Iraq," Woodside media officer Rob Millhouse told EnergyReview.Net in November.
Kurdistan also has much less severe security problems than other parts of Iraq, Woodside's director of new ventures Agu Kantsler said in an interview at the OSEA 2004 oil and gas conference in Singapore this week.
Since the US and Britain imposed a no-fly zone in the 1990s the Kurds had organised themselves “extremely effectively” and Kurdistan was relatively orderly, he told Bloomberg.
Millhouse told EnergyReview.Net that the company expected Iraq's political situation to improve over time, but this agreement was just an initial step to more fully understand the potential risks, rewards and benefits of investing in Iraq's oil and gas sector.
“It's too early too say whether this will lead to Woodside investing in Iraq," he said.
Iraq currently had no government policy on oil, no energy minister and no petroleum licensing laws, so there was no legal framework for investing in exploration and production.
Woodside will also sponsor the training of several professional Iraq Oil Ministry personnel in Perth and several Iraqi science and engineering students at Curtin University of Technology, also in Perth, Millhouse said.
