'IRAQ AND THE PERSIAN GULF' [‎316v] (635/862)

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494 CURRENCY, FINANCE, COMMERCE, AND OIL
Tigris were drilled and the important field near Kirkuk was dis
covered. Some moderately productive wells were sunk at Qaiyara,
but in 1931 the I.P.C. made a new agreement with the Government,
consolidating its concession east of the Tigris and relinquishing its
rights to Qaiyara and the west. It had by then acquired ample data
and sufficient legal protection to enable it to finance large-scale pro
duction and the construction of pipe-lines to Haifa and Tripoli on
the Mediterranean, which would deliver altogether 4 million tons of
crude oil a year.
The concession west of the Tigris was sold by the Government
in 1932 for a period of 75 years to the British Oil Development
Company (B.O.D.C.), or Mosul Oilfields Ltd., a combine of British,
French, German, and Italian interests, which prospected and drilled
the scattered geological structures with little success during the fol
lowing years. By 1937 the burden of financial disappointment was
greater than the company could bear, partly because the oil, which
had been discovered in considerable quantity, contained too high
a percentage of sulphur for profitable refinement, and partly because
its viscosity prevented its transport by pipe-line to the sea. As a
result, the I.P.C. again took over the concession west of the Tigris
and continued actively to drill for oil until the outbreak of the present
war, though without marked success.
These operations in the north excluded the area of the old Basra
vilayet, the concession for which was not leased until November
1938, when it was taken up by the Basra Petroleum Company
(B.P.C.), formed for the purpose and associated with the I.P.C.
The I.P.C. with its associates thus undertakes all prospecting for
oil in Iraq at the present time (fig. 78). The oilfield at Naft Khaneh,
south of Khanaqin, developed by the Khanaqin Oil Company, a sub
sidiary of the A.I.O.C., is described below.
The Kirkuk Oilfield
This productive field extends from south-east to north-west along
the line of the Kani Domlan hills and Avana Dagh on both sides of
the Little Zab (figs. 15, 23; pp. 88, 92). The oil occurs in a thick
porous and fissured limestone (Middle Eocene to Middle Miocene).
Thick marls lie below, and the oil is capped by a group of red, green,
and grey silts and marls with thin limestone bands and layers of
anhydrite and rock salt interbedded. The structure is an elongated
dome about 60 miles long and varies from 1 to 2 miles wide, sloping
fairly steeply on the south-west, more gently on the north-east, and