BAGHDAD, 22 September 2003 — Iraq wants to boost its oil output and exports to finance reconstruction costs but is hampered by the serious lack of security, post-war officials said here as they prepared for their first OPEC meeting.
“We are definitely eager to see the industry and production progressing, and are planning for exports,” said Shamkhi Huait Faraj, a member of the team from the interim administration attending this week’s OPEC talks in Vienna.
Since taking up their posts, the US-installed Iraqi leadership has tried to boost production and ensure a regular flow of crude from the country which has the world’s second largest reserves.
But the results have been disappointing for the markets. Faraj, one of five members of the Iraqi delegation to the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries meeting on Wednesday, sounded an upbeat note: “Production is moving higher, exports getting consistent and regular.
“We hope this trend will continue. Our objective is that exports reach 1.3 to 1.4 million barrels per day (bpd) by the end of December, and to raise exports to two million bpd at the end of the first quarter of 2004.”
Iraq was exporting 900,000 barrels per day at the end of August, said Mohammad Al-Jiburi, director general of Iraq’s State Oil Marketing Organization (SOMO) which is charged with selling the country’s oil.
The exported oil, coming from fields in the country’s south, transit by the oil terminal of Mina Al-Baqr on the Gulf. Paul Bremer, the US civilian administrator in Iraq, said that oil production in Iraq had reached 1.5 million bpd in the first 10 days of September, up from 1.1 million at the end of July.
But no oil is flowing onto the international market from the Kirkuk fields in northern Iraq because of repeated acts of sabotage, four in a month, against the pipeline running to the Turkish terminal of Ceyhan on the Mediterranean.
