BRUSSELS - Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki on Wednesday said his country was close to adopting a key energy law to encourage investment and strengthen international cooperation, notably with the European Union.
"We are close to a definitive agreement on the law on oil and gas which would allow us to seal strategic partnership deals and develop investments," Maliki told the European parliament's foreign affairs committee during a visit to Brussels.
The energy law is considered an essential step for national reconciliation in Iraq and to help bring investments into the sector.
The draft law stipulates a fair distribution of oil revenues between Iraq's 18 provinces, a very sensitive matter in a country wracked by intercommunal violence.
International oil companies have hesitated to invest in Iraq without the law agreed and introduced.
Iraq sits on the third largest oil reserves in the world, an estimated 115 billion barrels, but lacks the technology and capital to properly exploit its resource.
Maliki, who also had talks scheduled with EU leaders with the energy sector as a focus, said he wished to "boost cooperation with the European Union".
The EU in turn is keen to diversify its energy sources so as to lessen its dependence on Russian oil and gas.
The Europeans also hope Iraq will eventually provide natural gas through its planned Nabucco pipeline.
Nabucco is planned to be a 3,300-kilometre (2,050-mile) pipeline running from the Caspian Sea via Turkey and the Balkan states to Austria.
Construction is scheduled to begin in 2009, with the completion date set for 2013.
The pipeline will transport 31 billion cubic metres of gas to the energy-hungry EU from the Middle East and Asia so as to reduce the bloc's reliance on Russian supplies.
Russia's Gazprom is backing a rival pipeline project called South Stream.
The Iraqi prime minister was accompanied in Brussels by his oil minister Hussein al-Shahristani who was to be involved in talks later in the day with EU Energy Commissioner Andris Piebalgs.
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04/16/2008 11:24 GMT