Natural gas has been found in northern Iraq's Sulaymaniyah province when a well was dug up to find water for irrigation, local sources and officials said Tuesday.
From underground, water and fire erupted reaching the surface in a village located 60 kilometers west of Sulaymaniyah and 45 kilometers east of Kirkuk.
'I opened a well that was 80 meters deep to irrigate the crops for farming,' Meriwan Karim, the owner of the 100 decares of land, told Anadolu Agency.
'Suddenly, pressurized water sprang out of the well. There was the scent of matchsticks and natural gas,' he explained.
Karim added that water and flames have been erupting out of the well over the last three days, while hundreds of people have rushed to the well out of curiosity, resulting in seven people sustaining accidental burn injuries.
He added that a delegation from the Kurdish Regional Government's (KRG) Ministry of Natural Resources visited the land, and after examination, they confirmed that the flammable substance is natural gas.
Northern Iraq is known for its natural gas reserves, and the country has plans to export it through Turkey to Europe. However, production has not yet reached sufficiently high levels to be commercialized.
'There are vast natural gas and oil reserves in the Sulaymaniyah province,' Ghalib Mohammed Ali, head of the Oil and Gas Committee of the Sulaymaniyah Provincial Council, told Anadolu Agency.
'Natural gas reserves could reach around four to five trillion cubic meters in the province. This accounts for 80 percent of the total gas in the region,' he added.
Ali claimed that the natural gas in northern Iraq is of 'the best quality', and added that the KRG in Erbil should take faster steps for its management and in the distribution of licenses to energy companies for exploration and production.
Iraq has the fifth-largest natural gas reserves in the Middle East with 3.6 trillion cubic meters, according to BP's Statistical Review of World Energy 2015. However, the country only produced a total of 1.3 billion cubic meters in 2014 -- the lowest among all nations in the region.
Reporting by Muhammet Kursun
Writing by Ovunc Kutlu
Anadolu Agency
ovunc.kutlu@aa.com.tr