Iraq\'s Missan Oil Company The Iraqi Missan Oil Company (MOC) has finished drilling an explorative oil well in the al-Dima field, the first to be drilled in Iraq in nearly 30 years after explorative oil operations stopped back in 1983, according to a press release issued by the company\'s General Manager, Ali Maarij.
80 km south of Missan province, the project was carried out by the technical staff of the Iraqi Drilling Company (IDC) in cooperation with MOC. Maarij stated that \"the main target of drilling this well was to estimate the hydrocarbon accumulations in the geological structure of the region, in order to explore the oil and gas amounts in the area.\"
The process took 11 months as the drilling machines had to go to 4,260 metres underground and Maarij indicated that the tests and samples obtained from the well showed hydrocarbon accumulations in the sites of al-Saadi, al-Khasib, al-Mushrif  and al-Yamama, as well as others. These results point to the existence of \"huge reserves\" of oil and gas in the area.
He also added that the achievement is a fine start for domestic oil explorations in the country after a three decade hiatus. That the project was completed in less time than planned and at a cost of just $14 million, compared to the $100 million demanded by foreign companies for the same work, \"indicates that Iraqi oil companies can compete with foreign ones in performance at far lower costs.\"
Missan province has massive stocks of crude oil estimated at 30 billion barrels and the Iraqi government targets a 12 million barrel per day oil production in the next six years.