French giant Total signs mega deals with Iraq for oil, gas, water projects
Jobless Americans will have few options as benefits expire Govt urgently needs to develop gas resources to meet electricity demands
BAGHDAD, Sept 7, (AP): French energy giant Total signed mega contracts with Iraq worth $27 billion to develop oil fields, natural gas and a crucial water project that officials said Monday will be key for the oilrich country to maintain crude output.
The deals were inked Sunday with Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi in attendance, according to an Oil Ministry statement.
Total signed contracts with the ministry to develop the Ratawi oil field in southern Iraq, a gas processing hub to capture natural gas from five southern oil fields, and a much needed project to treat Gulf seawater and inject it into reservoirs to maintain oil production levels.
A fourth project was signed with the Electricity Ministry to build a 1,000 megawatt solar power plant.
It is the most lucrative and ambitious deal to be signed by an oil giant in Iraq in years and comes as other international oil companies have taken steps to exit from Iraq’s oil sector.
There was no immediate statement from Total.
Iraq urgently needs to develop local gas resources to meet electricity demands, especially during the peak summer months. The
country is heavily reliant on Iranian gas and electricity imports, which have been irregular in recent months due to outstanding payments and high demand inside Iran.
In a June interview, Oil Minister Ihsan Abdul-Jabbar Ismail said he was aiming to increase Iraq’s gas capacity by 3 billion cubic standard feet by 2025. The development of the gas processing hub would bring Iraq a step closer to that goal. Iraq currently imports 2 billion cubic standard feet to meet
domestic needs.
The project entails building a gas complex capable of separating and processing the natural gas associated with petroleum that is extracted from the Ratawi, West Qurna 2, Majnoon, Tuba and Luhais oil fields. Iraq currently lacks the means to capture this gas and it is burned off in the atmosphere. Experts complain that by not effectively capturing this natural gas, Iraq is wasting millions in revenue. Once processed, the gas can be fed to power plants to meet domestic electricity needs.
Iraq has said it plans to eliminate gas flaring in the next two to three years. The World Bank estimates Iraq flares around 16 billion cubic meters of gas per day.
But industry officials and technocrats inside the Oil Ministry said far more urgent for the well being of Iraq’s oil industry was the seawater development component of the package of deals.
Oil is Iraq’s main industry and accounts for 90% of state revenues. To keep current production rates and meet future targets, water is reinjected into the field to maintain well pressure.
Officials say the signing of the deal was pushed ahead by Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi ahead of national elections next month despite reservations from ministry technocrats who harbor doubts that Total is serious about executing the seawater element.
“The Oil Ministry and the (state-owned) Basra Oil Company have doubts that Total is serious about the seawater project. They think they will push for the oil field and gas hub projects and delay the rest,” said an industry official with knowledge of the contract negotiations. An official with BOC expressed the same concern. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to brief the press.
Industry and ministry officials have warned that adequate water supplies for reinjection is not guaranteed amid shortages and there is no other alternative in place.
NEW YORK, Sept 7, (AP): Millions of jobless Americans lost their unemployment benefits on Monday, leaving only a handful of economic support programs for those who are still being hit financially by the yearand-a-half-old coronavirus pandemic.
Two critical programs expired on Monday. One provided jobless aid to self-employed and gig workers and another provided benefits to those who have been unemployed more than six months. Further, the Biden administration’s $300 weekly supplemental unemployment benefit also ran out on Monday.
It’s estimated that roughly 8.9 million Americans will lose all or some of these benefits.
While the White House has encouraged states to keep paying the $300 weekly benefit by using money from the stimulus bills, no states have opted to do so. Many states even opted out of the federal program early after some businesses complained that they couldn’t find enough people to hire. The data have shown minimal economic benefits from cutting off aid early in those states.
Economists Peter McCrory and Daniel Silver of JPMorgan found “zero correlation” between job growth and state decisions to drop the federal unemployment aid, at least so far. An economist at Columbia University, Kyle Coombs, found only minimal benefits.
The amount of money injected by the federal government into jobless benefits since the pandemic began is nothing short of astronomical. The roughly $650 billion, according to the nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, kept millions of Americans who lost their jobs through no fault of their own in their apartments, paying for food and gasoline, and keeping up with their bills. The banking industry has largely attributed the few defaults on loans this past 18 months to the government relief efforts.
“The end of the pandemic unemployment benefits will be an abrupt jolt to millions of Americans who won’t find a job in time for this arbitrary end to assistance,” Andrew Stettner with the Century Foundation said in a report.
The ending of these programs comes as the US economy has recovered from the pandemic, but with substantial gaps in the recovery. The Labor Department says there are still 5.7 million fewer jobs than before the pandemic. Yet the department also estimated, last month, that there were roughly 10 million job openings.
These benefits are also ending sooner than during the previous crisis, the Great Recession. In that downturn, jobless benefits in various forms were extended from the start of the recession in 2008-2009 all the way until 2013. When those benefits finally ended, just 1.3 million people were still receiving aid.
Americans still financially struggling in the pandemic will find a smaller patchwork of social support programs, both at the state level and through the federal government.
The White House approved last month a 25% increase in food stamp assistance, also known as SNAP benefits. That increase will continue indefinitely for those 42.7 million Americans who receive those payments.
While the federal eviction moratorium has expired, roughly a dozen states - all controlled by Democrats have extended their moratoriums, including California, New York, Washington, Illinois and Minnesota. New York’s eviction moratorium was extended until Jan. 15.
The Biden administration also pushed the restart of federal student loan repayments until January. Those were supposed to have restarted this month.
Those unemployed less than six months will still be able to collect their benefits, but the amount will fall back to the level that each state pays. The average weekly check is roughly $387, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, but varies greatly state by state.
But none of these programs will have the flexibility or direct impact as unemployment benefits being paid directly to jobless Americans, wrote JPMorgan economists McCrory and Silver. They say the loss of benefits could lead to job losses that potentially could offset any of the job gains made as the economy recovers.