(Gas flaring number in third para corrected to 1.8 from 18) 

Iraq burns nearly 40 percent of its gas production capacity in the absence of investments needed to separate its massive associated gas deposits in most of its oilfields, an Iraqi press report said on Tuesday.

OPEC’s second largest oil producer has the world’s 13th biggest gas resources, estimated at nearly 132 trillion cubic feet, but most of them have remained untapped over the past decades due to wars and other factors, Baghdad Alyoum said.

“Iraq is still burning nearly 1.8 billion cubic feet of gas per day….this amount accounts for around 40 percent of its gas output capacity,” the network said, quoting Govand Shirwani, a well-known Iraqi oil expert and a professor at Cihan University in Erbil.

“Some of Iraq’s oil fields contain non-associated gas, including fields in Basra and Al-Anbar, but they also have not been exploited.”

Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Al-Sudani said in September that large gas contracts awarded to France’s TotalEnergies and other foreign firms over the past months would allow Iraq to end gas flaring, stop imports and achieve self-sufficiency in gas needed for its power facilities within five years.

(Writing by Nadim Kawach; Editing by Anoop Menon)

(anoop.menon@lseg.com)

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