Pertamina's West Qurna Oil Field in Iraq: Production Disruptions Amid Geopolitical Tensions

PT Pertamina Hulu Energy (PHE) has disclosed the status of its international oil fields, particularly in Iraq, following escalating geopolitical tensions in the Middle East.

PHE CEO Awang Lazuardi stated that the West Qurna field was temporarily shut down due to tensions arising from the conflict between Iran, the United States, and Israel.

He noted that the temporary halt in operations was a major obstacle for the company in maintaining its international production performance at the start of 2026.

“Regarding international operations, as we all know, there has been a conflict between the United States, Israel, and Iran. We have a field in Iraq called West Qurna. A few days after the conflict, the Iraqi government requested that the field be shut down,” he said during a hearing with the XII Commission of the Indonesian House of Representatives in Jakarta on Tuesday, 26 May 2026.

The shutdown of Iraq’s West Qurna field caused PHE to lose approximately 100,000 barrels of oil per day (bpd). Although operations have now been permitted to resume, production remains restricted to meet Iraq’s domestic needs only.

“We lost around 100,000 barrels of oil per day. Production has been allowed to resume but is still below full capacity, at less than 10%, solely to meet internal Iraqi needs, so it has not returned to normal. This is the challenge we faced in Q1 2026,” Awang added.

Following the West Qurna shutdown, PHE’s total oil production up to April 2026 was recorded at 475,000 bpd, with international fields contributing 109,000 bpd. The company continues to monitor developments in the region to restore production capacity to normal levels.

The disruption to overseas production is being mitigated through various acceleration programmes for the remainder of the year. PHE aims to achieve a total oil and gas production of 1.03 million barrels of oil equivalent per day (boepd) to make up for the Q1 shortfall.