QatarEnergy will partner with French TotalEnergy on a solar power project in Iraq, part of a larger energy project planned by the supermajor. The two will have equal shares in the enterprise, Arabian Gulf Business Insight reported.
The installation that TotalEnergies and QatarEnergy will build together will have a peak capacity of 1.25 GW and would be capable of supplying up to 350,000 households the Basra region in the right conditions. The installations, set to comprise as many as 2 million solar panels, will be built in phases beginning in 2025 and ending in 2027.
TotalEnergies earlier this year signed a massive deal with the Iraqi government worth a total $27 billion over the lifetime of all the projects it involved. These included the construction of a new gas network and treatment units, the construction of a large-scale seawater treatment unit, and the construction of a 1-gigawatt photovoltaic power plant in the southern Iraqi region of Basra—the one TotalEnergies is partnering with QatarEnergy to build.
Gas is, however, a bigger focus than solar in the $27-billion investment plan. As part of that plan, TotalEnergies and its partners will build installations to recover associated gas that is being flared on three oil fields and, as such, supply gas to 1.5 GW of power generation capacity in the first phase, growing to 3 GW in a second phase.
Currently, Iraq is highly dependent on gas deliveries from its neighbor Iran and wants to boost its reliance on domestic natural gas, which is currently mostly flared and therefore wasted. The partners in Iraq’s Gas Growth Integration Project are TotalEnergies with a 45% stake, QatarEnergy with 25%, and local Basra Oil Company with 30%.
Despite its focus on gas, the Iraqi government also has solar ambitions: earlier this year, it approved the construction of some 12 GW of solar capacity by 2030.
By Irina Slav for Oilprice.com
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