Press Briefing

Bidding for the Contract Areas will take place over two days on Monday, June 29, and Tuesday, June 30, 2009 in the Al Rasheed hotel in Baghdad, Republic of Iraq, commencing at 9:00am Baghdad time. The bidding process will be presided over by a Bidding Committee comprising senior officials of the Ministry of Oil.

Bids will be offered by means of a sealed bid, one Contract Area at a time, with bids opened publicly and results announced before the next Contract Area is offered.

Timing

The order of the bids and indicative timing (all Baghdad time) will be: Monday, June 29:

Introduction/Overview of Bidding Process 8:30am Rumaila 9:00am Mansuriya 11:00am Bai Hassan 2:00pm Zubair 4:00pm

Tuesday, June 30:

Missan 9:00am Kirkuk 11:00am Akkas 2:00pm West Qurna (1st Phase) 4:00pm

REPUBLIC OF IRAQ MINISTRY OF OIL Petroleum Contracts & Licensing Directorate

جمهورية العراق وزارة النفط

راخيص البتروليةـدائرة العقود والت /ع ت: العدد

Bidding Process Four contract areas are offered on each day. A representative from each company or consortium wishing to bid enters the bidding area by the time indicated with an envelope and bid form provided to them by the PCLD. The names of the bidders (but not the bid itself) are identified on the sealed bid envelope and the qualification of the parties to bid for that area is checked. The sealed bid envelopes are then received one by one by the Bidding Committee and placed in a transparent bid box for all to see. The envelopes are then retrieved, opened and the bid announced to the audience one at a time. Companies bid two parameters: the Plateau Production Target that they will expect to produce (higher bids score higher), and the Remuneration Fee (lower fee bids score higher) that they are prepared to accept in return. Once all the bids for each area have been opened, the bid with the best combination of production and fee offer is calculated according a pre-set formula that was previously advised to the bidders. The Remuneration Fee part of the bid is subject to a Maximum Remuneration Fee (the MRF). The MRF is predetermined, and is placed in a sealed envelope in the transparent bid box ahead of the bids from the companies being received. The MRF envelope will be opened once all bids have been received. There follows a public process of checking that the Remuneration Fee of the bid with the highest points lies at or below this maximum. If not, there is a further process by which the high scorer can reduce its Remuneration Fee offer to match, or have this option passed to the second-placed bid. The next contract area is then offered some 2 hours later. Companies may bid alone or in consortium, and may change consortia between areas. The time between bids also allows them to fine tune their bids based on the results of the bidding that has gone before. Although companies may, subject to their success in the bidding and having previously paid a participation fee for an area, bid as many times as they wish, a company acting as Operator can only win one area, and may participate in a consortium that it does not operate in two more winning bids (i.e. a maximum participation in 3 contract areas). The table below provides initial production rates as well as information on the signature bonus and minimum expenditure obligation for each field.

Information on Contract Areas

Contract Area

Current Production

Rate

Minimum Plateau

Production Target 1

Minimum Production Increment

Bid 2

RecoverableSignature Bonus 3

Minimum Expenditure Obligation

Barrels per Day, unless indicated otherwise US$ Million

Rumaila 956,550 1,750,000 50,000 500 300

Kirkuk 416,000 600,000 25,000 400 200

West Qurna 258,505 600,000 25,000 400 250

Zubair 195,000 400,000 25,000 300 200

Bai Hassan 160,000 220,000 10,000 300 150

Missan 100,000 275,000 25,000 300 200

Akkas N/A 4 400 MMscfd 25 MMscfd 200 150

Mansuriya N/A 4 300 MMscfd 25 MMscfd 200 100 Notes:

1. Plateau Production Target bids below this level will not be accepted.

2. The minimum production increment for bidding the Plateau Production Target is 25,000 BOPD, except for Rumaila and Bai Hassan which are 50,000 BOPD and 10,000 BOPD, respectively.

3. The Signature Bonus is repaid with interest over five (5) years in quarterly installments commencing two (2) years after the Contract’s Effective Date.

4. Not in production.

Overview of the Contract Areas: Rumaila

Historically, the Rumaila asset has been considered as two separate fields for the purposes of development and production, split into north and south sections with very similar estimates of oil in place volumes though the areal extent of the south is over twice that of the north. Both North and South Rumaila are here considered a single asset to be developed together as they comprise a single geological structure. At present, the majority of production in Iraq comes from Rumaila and the northern supergiant field, Kirkuk.

The structure of the South Rumaila section is a north-south trending anticline approximately 38 kilometers long and 12 kilometers wide. There are four reservoir units in the South Rumaila field that have been appraised and produced from, and which are part of the package on offer. These units are distributed between the Mishrif and Zubair formations, one reservoir in the limestone of the Mishrif and three in the Zubair. The Zubair reservoirs are the Upper Shale, Upper Sandstone and Lower Sandstone members. The Upper and Lower Sandstone members are locally also known as Main Pay and Fourth Pay, respectively.

In North Rumaila, three reservoirs are in development. As with the south, this includes the Mishrif limestone and Upper Zubair sandstone, but not the other Zubair reservoirs. The heterogeneous Nahr Umr Formation is the third reservoir in North Rumaila. The structure in the north is a continuation of the southern anticline, and the areal extent is about 130 square kilometers. Again, as with other fields, there are numerous promising oil shows in other horizons that are not included in the current offer.

Kirkuk

The super-giant Kirkuk field lies in north Iraq, near the town of Kirkuk. The field is an elongated, northwest-southeast oriented structure over 100 kilometers long and up to 4 kilometers wide. The field comprises three domes. From the northwest these are the Khurmala, Avanah and Baba domes. An additional dome, named Zab, further to the northwest, was thought to be the fourth dome of the Kirkuk field but has been shown to be a separate structure.

The Baba and Avanah domes, separated by the Amshe saddle, comprise the original and intended field development. Development of the Khurmala dome was planned in the 1980s but was postponed and activity there has only recently resumed.

Four reservoirs have been developed in the Kirkuk field. Extensive fracturing has caused the Jeribe and Euphrates formations to be in communication with each other and the

Kirkuk group, creating a single reservoir of Oligocene to Miocene age known as the Main Limestone. The Kometan and Mauddud formations are also considered to be a single reservoir. The remaining two reservoirs in the field are the Maastrichtian Shiranish and Aptian Shu’aiba formations.

West Qurna

West Qurna is a substantial oil field in the southeast of Iraq, around 50 kilometers northwest of the city of Basrah. Overlapping the northern edge of the Rumaila field, West Qurna can be regarded geologically as a structural extension of North Rumaila, but was designated a separate field for non-technical reasons. It is considered a separate asset for development in this offer.

Three reservoirs of West Qurna have been produced from in the past, though it is only a single reservoir that is currently planned for future development and therefore on offer. This reservoir is the Mishrif Formation, the Zubair and Sa’di reservoirs being much less significant in comparison.

Zubair

Zubair is a substantial oil field in the southeast of Iraq, around 20 kilometers southwest of the city of Basrah. The field exists in structural traps in an anticline that runs roughly north-northwest to south-southeast.

There are four domes to the Zubair field, from the northwest these are the Al-Hamar, Shuaiba, Rafidyah and Safwan domes. Safwan, the most southern dome, extends beyond Iraq’s border and into Kuwait, where it is known as the Abdalli field. There are three reservoirs that have been appraised and produced from, and are available for further development. These are the Mishrif Formation, and the Upper and Lower units of the Zubair Formation (also known locally as the Third and Fourth Pay, respectively).

There are hydrocarbon shows and strong potential in several other reservoir intervals. However, these have not yet been appraised and so are not included in any current plans for future development.

Bai Hassan

The Bai Hassan field lies in the north of Iraq, just to the southwest of the Kirkuk field. The field is an elongated, northwest-southeast oriented structure about 25 kilometers long and up to 4 kilometers wide. The main part of the structure is referred to as the Kithke dome, the extension to the northwest as the Daoud dome. The main producing horizons are the same fractured Tertiary limestone formations as those found in the Kirkuk field (the Main Limestone). There is also production from the same three Cretaceous reservoirs as in Kirkuk, namely the Shiranish, Mauddud (though it excludes the Kometan) and Shu’aiba formations.

Mansuriya

The Mansuriya field is located 50 kilometers northeast of Baquba city in Diyala provice, which is about 100 kilometers northeast of Baghdad. This field is part of the Hamrin south range along the axial trend of Khasm Al Ahmer. The structure is an elongated northwest-southeast trending anticline associated with a pop-up structure formed by reverse faults in the northeast and southwest sides. The main structure is about 20 kilometers long and 3 to 4 kilometers wide based on the structure map for the top Jeribe Formation.

The gas accumulation was discovered in the Miocene Jeribe formation and Transition Beds. Following the discovery well, three exploration wells have been drilled and tested for the intervals of Jeribe Formation and Transition Beds. The field is not in production.

Missan

The Missan area is located in the southeast of Iraq, close to the border with Iran, and contains both producing and undeveloped fields. The largest town in the region is Amara, some 50 kilometers to the southwest of the main oil producing area.

The terrain in the area is variable but is mainly flat semi-arid to arid conditions with slight increasing elevation from Amara to Abu Ghirab, approximately 150m above sea level.

There are three fields included in this area: Buzurgan, Abu Ghirab and Fauqi. The first oil production from the area began in 1976 (from the Buzurgan and Abu Ghirab fields), however production was suspended in 1980 because of the Iraq–Iran war, and did not restart until 1998.

The formations are mainly carbonate, though some mixed carbonate/sandstone formations are also seen.

Akkas

The Akkas (also called Salah Al Dine) gas field is situated in the far west of Iraq, within the Western Desert, in the Al-Anbar province, 30 kilometers south of Al Qaim city by the Syrian border. It comprises an oval anticline structure, with a northwest-southeast axial trend, bound to the north by the Anah Graben and to the east by the Abo Jear fault system. The structure is around 30 kilometers long and 12 kilometers wide.

Positioned in the far west of Iraq, the field has been little affected by the tectonic activity that created the Zagros Mountains in the northeast. Therefore, the structure has little relief, and was created through vertical movement of the crystalline basement pushing up from below. The petroleum system of the Akkas Field is stratigraphically much lower than that in most of Iraq’s discovered fields, consisting of latest Ordovician and early Silurian clastic sediments.