Is Iraq’s foreign policy at the regional and international levels dictated by its position as an oil producer and exporter or is Iraq managing its resources in function of what its alliances and relationships allows it to do? Judging by the past, oil has mostly been a victim of the politics of the regime. This does not only apply to the last one, but goes back as far as the…
Tag: Somo
Pumping Up Exports
ConocoPhilips today became the first lifter to load Iraqi crude from the newly opened SPM (single point mooring) in the Mideast Gulf. The new loading facility is now officially open, offering up to 500,000 b/d of export capacity on top of the 1.8 million b/d available at Basrah Oil Terminal and Khor al-Amaya Terminal. That’s more than enough to absorb the idle production capacity currently available in southern Iraq. The…
2012 Production Challenge
Iraqi oil production has been slowly, but steadily, ramping up in the last three years, from an average of 2.336 million b/d in 2009 to 2.358 million b/d in 2010, to an average of 2.66 for the first eight months of this year, according to oil ministry official figures. With this, exports have also risen by almost 300,000 b/d, from a 2009 average of 1.9 million b/d in 2009 to…