According to one of the senior oil officials has said that the production of oil in from the southern region of Iraq has reached 2.5 million bpd and this has taken the country closer to become one of the biggest source of oil in the world in the next few years.
Rumaila, the biggest oil field of Iraq is operated by BP and it is producing 1.35 million bpd of oil, at the same time Zubair oilfield which is run by ENI from Italy is producing 270,000bpd of oil. This information is provided by Dhiya Jaffar the head of South Oil Co. which is run and supervised by the central government.
In the next three years, Iraq an OPEC member is looking forward to double the present amount of oil production and this will prove its way to recover from the long lasting war. In the last month, total oil production of the country has risen over 3 million bpd and it is the highest in the last three decades.
According to Jaffar, the major oil fields operated by foreign companies have boosted the total amount of production and it has reached up to 2.5 million bpd in the southern region of the country.
Jaffar has also said the West Qurna Oil field which is run by Exxon Mobil was initially 450,000 bpd and the production will increase about 50,000 bpd by the end of the year 2012, and then the oil field will try and achieve the production amount of 600,000 bpd by the year 2013.
The SOC chief has said that this increase in the production of oil is coming from the oil fields of Luhais of Basra and Nassiriya and both of the oil fields are developed by the state oil company of Iraq.
In June Luhais has been producing about 27,000 to 30,000 bpd of oil and at present this oil field is producing about 70,000 bpd of oil, this information has been provided by a statement made by Jaffar.
He has also added that Nassiriya which has a listed reserve of 5 billion barrels has been producing about 35,000 bpd which is way more in amount than the initial production of 15,000 bpd.
Due to the war and economic instability, the infrastructure and loading capacity of oil has been hugely neglected and that is why the amount of oil export suffered hugely in the past. As newer outlets are being constructed and opened, the oil export capacity of Iraq will increase significantly in the year 2012.
Oil export from Iraq has risen up to 2.565 million bpd as average in the month of August and it is the highest level of production in the last three decades. The reason behind this increase is the shipment totaling 2.252 million bps from the oil fields of Basra.
Source [Reuters]