Heritage soars 25% on Kurdistan find

Heritage Oil has uncovered an oilfield in Iraq’s Kurdistan region that it said could yield more than 4bn barrels of oil. The news sent its shares up 25 per cent.

The announcement by the independent explorer, which comes after a year of large oil strikes in Uganda, increases the oil prospectivity of Iraq’s northern autonomous region of Kurdistan. The region has attracted many other smaller oil companies including OMV, Addax and DNO. However, the discovery also draws attention to the political uncertainty surrounding oil licences in Kurdistan.

Iraq’s central government in Baghdad remains at loggerheads with the Kurdistan regional government in Erbil over the validity of oil licences granted by Erbil. Baghdad has declared many licences invalid, thus holding up full-scale oil exportation for Addax and DNO, the two juniors ready to start exporting through a pipeline controlled by Baghdad.