Baghdad – Iraq has selected a lot more milestones for itself as an oil producing power and it has targeted to reach the 6 million bpd of export by the year 2017. It has also been confirmed that Iraq is producing more oil than the neighboring country and another OPEC member Iran.
Abdul-Kareem Luaibi has said that the oil export will reach the 2.9 million mark in 2013, 3.5 million bpd in 2014 and 3.75 million market in 2015.
The current amount of production is 3.2 million bpd and it is the highest in the last three decades. Among the production, 2.6 million bpd is exported.
The minster has added that they are expecting the export will be more than 2.6 million bpd this month. Till now the amount of export is 2.6 million bpd and the amount of production is 3.2 million bpd.
Iraq has this very ambitious plan to produce 12 million bpd of oil by 2017 and it seeks support and help from the foreign companies for this purpose. The plan was nice, but it is somehow unrealistic, because there are infrastructure problems and logistical drawbacks. The country may target the 8 – 8.5 million bpd mark, but according to some of the analysts and executive even a target of 6 million bpd of oil by 2017 will be too much for this war torn country.
If the supply for Iraq rises, then the shortage of crude from Iran will be taken care of. Not only that, the price of the crude oil can also be controlled because the western sanctions have targeted the supply system of Iran only.
The country of Iraq is trying to recover from the age long war and other problematic situations and boos the amount of oil flow in the market. The most amount of crude oil from Iraq is exported through the Gulf ports.
With the ambition of doubling the oil productions in the next three years, fueling eth countries mind, Iraq has already gone past the 3 million bpd mark in the first time for the last 30 years and it has now overtaken Iran and has become the second biggest oil produces among all the OPEC countries and after Saudi Arabia.
Falah Al Amri, the PEC governor for Iraq and the head of the State Oil Marketing Organization has states during a conference on oil in Baghdad, that the Iraq is now producing 32. Million bpd and this way the country has managed to outpace even Iran in OPEC and the production level of Iran has gone down than before.
The oil export level of Iraq has also rose up to 2.565 million bpd as an average in August of this year and it is the highest in the last three decades.
The central government of Iraq and the autonomous Kurdish region has finally reached a deal and the matter has been announced last Tuesday, this deal will end the oil payment dispute and that is why Kurdish authority has agreed on continue the exports and Baghdad has agreed to pay the foreign companies working in the Kurdish region.
According to this agreement the Kurdish authorities has agreed to keep the oil export level at 140,000 bpd for this month and for the rest of year the mark will be 200,000 bpd. This amount of the oil will be able to boost the total amount of oil export by the country significantly. If this deal continuous, then it will be like a breakthrough for the long running feud over land, energy resources and authority for signing contracts with the international companies, between the central government and Kurdish authorities.
Luaibi has stated that the investment that happened in Iraq for the last two and half years will go to the development of the oil fields and this responsibility will be given to the foreign companies in three auctions, which has been able to collect total $15 billion. It is a good figure but less than the ambition of the government.
Source [Gulf Daily News]