Arbil: Oil exports resumed from Iraq's semi-autonomous Kurdish region for the first time since the beginning of the month and are flowing at a rate of 75,000 barrels a day, a North Oil Co official said.
Exports from the region controlled by the Kurdistan Regional Government may reach their previous level of 150,000 barrels a day, according to the official of the state-run company, speaking yesterday by telephone from the city of Kirkuk. He declined to be identified by name for security reasons.
Kurdish authorities said on Sunday they were working to restore oil exports after "technical difficulties" had halted shipments through the export pipeline to Turkey. The Kurdistan Regional Government and the central government in Baghdad have been at loggerheads over revenue from the sale of oil pumped from Kurdish fields. Their wrangling has been a chief obstacle to the passage of a new national energy law, the lack of which complicates Iraq's efforts to attract oil and gas investments.
Output forecast
The dispute, together with inadequate storage and other facilities needed to handle additional oil volumes, means Iraq is unlikely to "substantially increase" crude production by 2013, Barclays said in a report.
"Infrastructure constraints have to be resolved if Iraqi production is to make any meaningful strides forward," Amrita Sen and Helima Croft, analysts at Barclays, said in the note.
