The company and Baghdad are taking further time to hammer out key sticking points in the long-delayed energy deal, Iraq's oil ministry spokesman Assem Jihad said on Thursday. TotalEnergies agreed in 2021 to build four oil, gas and renewables projects with an initial investment of $10 billion in southern Iraq over 25 years. The deal has experienced several setbacks amid disputes between Iraqi politicians over its terms, sources told Reuters early last year. TotalEnergies had asked its foreign staff to leave the country and local employees to work from home, four Iraqi sources confirmed this week, as it struggles to resolve differences with Baghdad. Foreign staff have now returned and everything is back to normal, according to two oil ministry sources on Friday, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to speak to the media. (Reporting by Aref Mohammed in Basra and Rowena Edwards in London; Additional reporting by America Hernandez in London; Editing by Louise Heavens, Kirsten Donovan)
(Adds comments from TotalEnergies, adds dateline)
By Rowena Edwards and Aref Mohammed
LONDON/BASRA, Feb 3 (Reuters) - Foreign staff at French
oil major TotalEnergies have returned to Iraq after
disputes with Baghdad over a $27 billion cluster of major energy
projects prompted their exit, two sources told Reuters on
Friday.
The return of TotalEnergies' staff shows that their exit is
simply a negotiating tactic, member of the Iraqi parliament
Mustafa Jabbar Sanad wrote in a Twitter post on Friday.
Jabbar Sanad wrote on Jan. 30 that TotalEnergies had asked
its foreign staff to leave Iraq to obstruct negotiations over
the energy project.
TotalEnergies staff never left Iraq, a spokesperson said on
Friday.
The company did not respond to repeated requests for comment
from Jan. 30 until Feb. 2 when it declined to comment, citing a
quiet period ahead of its 2022 results.
When TotalEnergies commented on Friday, it had yet to
publish the results due on Feb. 8.
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