>>>>>>The oil companies will spend billions updating the infrastructure and will only be able to extract for a few years before Iraq nationalizes the entire industry. Hence the 75% early return. Watch the market's reaction when this is actually passed.
>>>>>
>>>>>Jake, do you think the oil companies are doing this out of the goodness of their hearts or do you think they might want to make a small ROI?
>>>>
>>>>Investment? What investment?
>>>
>>>Well Jake says they will need to build infrastructure in order to exploit the oil reserves. That is done in order to make a return. The infrastructure is an investment made to create a return, no?
>>
>>Being that Iraq has been an oil producing nation for many years, I wonder how much infrastructure needs building (or re-building as the case may be). I guess I'll just have to start googling.
>
>Oil fields need to be maintained all time, and when old fields got depleted new ones need to be discovered and brought to production. Btw, the whole thing started in this thread is about new oil development, and it's hard to believe that new oil can be brought to market without investments.

I know, but thread drift being what it is, we somehow got onto spending billions to update the infrastructure. Now I know that Iraq has allocate 4 billion dollars to infrastructure updating, I'm just wondering how much more needs to be spent. I imagine it is in the billions. I'm just curious about the real numbers.

I did find this: http://www.rebuild-iraq-expo.com/News_show_news.asp?id=2584