Shafaq News/ Iraq's oil ministry on Tuesday said investments in gas resources is a top priority for the government as it prepares for a new bidding round. 

The ministry's undersecretary for gas affairs, Izzat Sabir, said that the government is "committed to developing the gas sector to increase national production and reduce gas flaring."

Sabir made those remarks during a meeting with representatives of gas companies and government departments to discuss the five-year plan for the gas sector, saying that the ministry has already signed contracts with international companies to invest in gas from all of Iraq's promising oil fields.

"These projects are currently under construction and will gradually increase national production," he said, "Work is underway on projects in Halfaya, Nasiriya, Gharraf, and Basra. We also signed new contracts with Total and launched another project in the Nahran Bin Omar field." 

He also expressed hope that the fifth, fifth "supplementary", and sixth licensing rounds would add significant quantities to national production.

"The meeting also discussed the five-year plan, the programs of the Basra Gas Company and the South Gas Company, and preparations for the upcoming bidding rounds for gas investments," the press release concluded. 

Baghdad plans to hold two new upstream licensing rounds in the first half of 2024. The Oil Ministry offers 30 blocks across the country with the key sweetener investment-friendly amendments to its 2018 profit-sharing contract model. But oil companies interested in blocks bordering Syria and Jordan face a new kind of security risk following the eruption of the Hamas-Israel war on Oct 7.

Notably, Iraq, OPEC's second-largest producer after Saudi Arabia, flares much of its own gas, extracted alongside crude oil at its fields, because it lacks the facilities to process it into fuel and instead uses Iranian power imports to generate electricity. Baghdad has been under pressure from the United States to reduce its reliance on gas imports from Iran.