SHUNEH, Jordan, 22 June 2003 — Iraq will resume exports from its oil fields next month, its acting Oil Minister Thamer Ghadhban said yesterday on the sidelines of a meeting here of the World Economic Forum.
“I hope next month”, Ghadhban told reporters when asked when Iraq will resume exporting from oil fields and not only from storage. He added that he was unable to give an exact date. “We are now formulating a new marketing policy, it will take a few days. I cannot give an exact date on when exports will resume,” he said.
Ghadhban also did not specify the volumes expected to be initially exported: “I cannot give any figure.”
His comments were in contrast to claims earlier by the head of Iraq’s State Oil Marketing Organization, Mohammed Al-Juburi, that exports would begin today through the pipeline to Turkey.
Ghadhban clarified Juburi’s statement.
He explained on Sunday Iraq would only begin loading tankers with crude oil that has been stored in the Turkish terminal of Ceyhan for at least two months.
He expected Iraq to start loading tankers with crude oil from reservoirs in the south, near the city of Basra, on June 28 “and perhaps two days before that” from the terminal of Mina Al-Bakr, also on the Gulf.
The Iraqi crude oil stored in Ceyhan and in Basra have been waiting to be shipped since before the end of the March-April US-led war on Iraq. The amount of crude oil in storage stands at around 10 million barrels, of which 8.3 million barrels are in the Turkish terminal. Ghadhban said Iraq was now producing around 800,000 barrels per day, of which some 500,000 bpd was from the northern fields and 300,000 bpd from the south. He said the pipelines for exports through Ceyhan and Mina Al-Bakr were both “in working order.”
In May, when Ghadhban was appointed by the US-led coalition running post-war Iraq, he forecast his country would return to the international oil market in June.
Meanwhile, OPEC President Abdullah Al-Attiyah said yesterday he would visit Iraq in September upon an invitation from Ghadhban. “Ghadhban invited me to Iraq, I will make that visit,” Attiyah, who is also Qatar’s energy minister, told AFP on the sidelines of a World Economic Forum conference.
“We will discuss OPEC, the oil situation in Iraq and how we cooperate. I belong to those who strongly advocate the need to support Iraq,” he said, adding that the invitation was for September.
