The Association of International Petroleum Negotiators (AIPN) held a seminar in Washington on Wednesday regarding Iran, Iraq and Kuwait. A panel talked on the three countries and recent developments in their hydrocarbons sector.

What is most interesting is the cases of Iran and Iraq and oil development (or undevelopment in the case of the former).  The Iraqi government and foreign concessionaires have very lofty goals for Iraqi oil development, which could do much to shaken some long standing influences within OPEC. Furthermore, will the Iraqi oil bonanza force a post-sanctions Iran to offer foreign energy companies investment terms far more favorable than the relatively unpopular “buy back” method?

Another notable aspect of the discussion was the issue of Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG), of a large portion of world supplies are held by Iran and Qatar.  It will be interesting to see how these develop.  The potential of Iran’s oil fields opening to investment increasingly call into question the issue of whether or not we will see a breakthrough in the P5+1 talks coming up over Iran’s nuclear file.