HKN Energy, Ross Perot Jr.’s oil company, announced Wednesday it had made a commercial oil discovery in the Kurdistan region of Iraq.
HKN, a subsidiary of Hillwood International Energy, is one of a fleet of oil companies drilling in Kurdistan since the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003. The company said it plans to begin production by the end of May on two wells that so far have shown production levels of 25,000 barrels of a day.
“Kurdistan continues to show tremendous promise,” Perot, founder and chairman of Hillwood, said in a statement. He called the region “one of the last great onshore oil frontiers in the world.”
Last year the prime minister of the Kurdistan Regional Government estimated that oil exports should reach 1 million barrels a day by next year, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Last year, daily production was estimated at 250,000 barrels.
HKN began operations in Kurdistan in 2006. It drills in what is known as the Sarsang Block along with Marathon Oil and Maersk Oil. The Kurdistan government owns a 25 percent interest in the field.
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