The head of the Oil Directorate in the Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources, Ashraf al-Rawashdeh, said on Sunday that the Iraqi side decided to cancel the gas line, which was supposed to be accompanied by the Basra-Aqaba oil pipeline.
The sources said that this trend was aimed at reducing the cost of the oil pipeline project between the two countries to accelerate its completion, adding that the purpose of the gas line was the operation of pumping stations along the main pipeline, namely the oil pipeline, in addition to providing Jordan any quantities of surplus pumping stations need in case Jordan needed any quantities of this gas.
Al-Rawashdeh said that the project developer will look for an alternative to the operation of pumping stations instead of gas and commensurate with the economic feasibility of the project, noting that the ministry was informed of this decision in June.
Al-Rawashdeh said that the project development and management contract has been extended to 25 years instead of the previously planned 20 years before it was handed over to the Jordanian government, adding that this was also part of the process of improving the economics of the project to motivate the developer to speed it up.
An official Iraqi source told the newspaper that work was planned to be carried out within the Jordanian territory by the end of this year.
In April 2013, the two sides signed a framework agreement to build a pipeline to transport Iraqi crude oil from Basra to export ports at the port of Aqaba at a total cost of about $ 18 billion.
