Up for grabs will be a stake in two exploration projects in Kurdistan—one in which it has a 40% interest, along with Canada’s WesternZagros (40%) and the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG, 20%) and another in which it has a 60% interest, with the KRG holding 40%.

Talisman has a total of 119,000 acres of oil exploration property in Kurdistan, with those assets valued at between $750 million and $1.25 billion.

Talisman is seeking to cut costs by around 20% this year in the wake of poor quarterly financial results that are down some 50% over last year due largely to a natural-gas-heavy portfolio.

In Kurdistan, Talisman shouldering too large a portion of the burden of developing significant finds, particularly in the block it owns solely with the Kurdish government.

"We're in active discussions with several parties about reducing our interests there," Talisman CEO Hal Kvisle told the Wall Street Journal. "We probably have more financial exposure to that than we want."

"We're into what appears to be a fairly significant oil discovery in Kurdistan, [but] on the larger half of that structure we're paying 100% of the costs for a 60% interest," he said.



Hawar Abdulrazaq