A Comparative Study of the Fiscal Arrangements of Petroleum Service Contracts in Iraq and Iran

Petroleum upstream service contracts possess different aspects of legal, contractual, fiscal, economic, technical, technological and environmental nature. In this research, efforts have been made to review one of the aspects of the petroleum upstream contracts which have been far too little considered by the domestic legal community, namely the fiscal system of upstream service contracts. Since every service contract avails of its own independent fiscal system, we tried, using the analytic and comparative approach, to review the fiscal system of Iranian service contracts (buy-back) after taking a close look at the fiscal system service contracts used in Iraq. Since our country is in possession of Joint Petroleum Fields with Iraq, it would be extremely beneficial, from the comparative law perspective, to take into full account the contracts concluded overseas for the same field. thus, in the interest of producing a practical research, benefits have been taken from the details two draft petroleum service contracts of Iran and Iraq.