Baghdad steps up energy self-sufficiency drive

Soaring oil revenues and heavy Chinese investment have driven a series of recent refining and gas deals

Chinese state-owned heavy industry conglomerate Powerchina is a credible actor. So its mid-January claim to have been awarded an $880mn, 54-month EPC contract for a new refinery in Iraq’s southeastern Maysan province appears to be further evidence of renewed impetus for a refining capacity build-out in the country, driven by windfall crude revenues and Beijing’s seemingly inexhaustible appetite for deeper commercial ties. But the details are slightly more complicated. The contract has apparently been awarded by Missan International Refinery & Chemical Company—the name previously given to a consortium formed in 2016 to develop a 150,000bl/d downstream plant at Maysan, which had been assum