TotalEnergies Signs Contracts to Advance $10 Billion Gas Growth Project in Basra

TotalEnergies and its partners signed the last two major construction contracts for the Gas Growth Integrated Project at a ceremony in Baghdad on September 15, putting every component of the $10 billion program into the build phase and setting up first output from the Ratawi field in southern Iraq as early as 2026. The deals cover full redevelopment of the Ratawi oil field and the Common Seawater Supply Project, the water-injection backbone the whole scheme depends on.

The signatures matter because they close the loop. GGIP has four legs, natural gas, oil, solar and water, and until now the water and full-field oil pieces were the ones still waiting on final contracts. With those inked, TotalEnergies CEO Patrick Pouyanne told the ceremony the first phase is scheduled to start up early next year.

Who owns what

The consortium behind GGIP is led by TotalEnergies as operator with a 45% stake. Basra Oil Company holds 30% and QatarEnergy holds 25%. That structure has been fixed since the deal was finalized, and it survived the years of stop-start negotiation that dogged the project before construction actually began.

The Baghdad ceremony drew the political weight you would expect for a project this size. Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani, Oil Minister Hayan Abdul Ghani and Qatari Energy Minister Saad Sherida Al-Kaabi were among the officials present. For Baghdad, GGIP is less an oil deal than an electricity fix wearing an oil deal's clothes.

The flaring problem GGIP is built to solve

Iraq burns off enormous volumes of associated gas, the gas that comes up with crude, because it has never built enough infrastructure to capture and process it. The country then turns around and imports gas and electricity, much of it from Iran, to keep the lights on. The math has been indefensible for years: flare the fuel at the wellhead, then pay to import fuel to make power.

The gas leg of GGIP goes straight at that. The project will capture roughly 160 million cubic feet per day of associated gas from Ratawi that is currently flared. A gas processing plant sized at up to 300 million cubic feet per day, awarded to China Petroleum Engineering and Construction Corp, will treat it. TotalEnergies has also been standing up an early gas treatment unit ahead of the full plant so it can begin cutting flares before the larger facility is finished.

The payoff is power. Captured gas will feed power plants that the partners say can supply electricity to about 1.5 million Iraqi households. In a country where summer blackouts are a chronic political problem, that number is the one Baghdad cares about most.

Oil, water and the sequence of build-out

Ratawi is the anchor. Phase 1 targets 120,000 barrels per day of oil, timed for early 2026. Phase 2 pushes production to 210,000 barrels per day by 2028, and TotalEnergies says the field will reach that level with zero routine flaring, which is the whole point of pairing the oil and gas legs in a single program.

None of that works without water. The Common Seawater Supply Project, the second contract signed on September 15, will treat and pump around 5 million barrels of seawater a day for injection to maintain reservoir pressure across the Basra fields. Iraq has historically leaned on fresh water for injection, a wasteful practice in a water-stressed region. Routing treated seawater in instead frees up a large volume of fresh water each day for other uses. Hyundai took the seawater treatment facility contract; Turkey's Enka is building the central processing facility, sized for 210,000 barrels per day of oil handling.

The solar piece

The fourth leg is a solar plant rated at 1 gigawatt of alternating-current capacity. It is smaller in dollar terms than the oil and gas work, but it fits the pitch TotalEnergies has made from the start, that GGIP is a multi-energy program rather than a straight upstream play. The company's framing, more energy and lower emissions, leans on the combination of stopping flares, adding gas-fired generation and bolting on utility-scale solar.

Whether the solar plant delivers on schedule is a fair thing to watch. Large solar builds in southern Iraq face heat, dust and grid-connection hurdles that have slowed other projects in the region. The gas-to-power piece is the one carrying the near-term load.

What to watch next

The early-2026 start-up date is the first real test. TotalEnergies says roughly 2,700 workers are already mobilized on GGIP, about 2,000 of them Iraqi, with headcount set to climb toward 7,000 Iraqi workers at peak construction. Hitting 120,000 barrels per day of Ratawi oil and getting the early gas unit reducing flares on the promised timeline would give the partners a credible track record heading into the heavier Phase 2 and CSSP work.

The longer arc runs to 2028, when Phase 2 oil, the full 300 million cubic feet per day of gas processing and the water injection system are all supposed to be running together. If they are, Iraq will have converted a field's worth of wasted gas into steady domestic power and cut its reliance on imported energy at the same time. That is the case for GGIP in one sentence. Now it has to be built.

For context, the project has been years in the making. The partnership was signed under a 2021 agreement, spent long stretches stalled over commercial terms, and only reached groundbreaking on the early gas unit in January. The September contracts are the point where GGIP stops being a plan and becomes a construction site on all four fronts at once.