Amman, Jordan: Iraq’s average crude exports will suffer only a very small reduction due to maintenance work starting in September, a senior Iraqi oil official said on Tuesday, contradicting estimates from the International Energy Agency that the work would reduce oil exports by around 500,000 barrels a day for four to six months.

“We are planning maintenance to the southern export terminals, but it would not affect our export capacity,” and the country will still hit its average export targets, Faisal Khalaf Wadi, deputy head of Iraq’s largest state oil firm, the South Oil Co., told the Wall Street Journal.

The IEA, which represents some of the world’s largest oil consumers, warned on Friday that crude supply from the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries was falling, even as it raised its forecast for demand for the exporters group’s oil this year.

It highlighted Iraq as a particular concern, warning that the planned work on oil export infrastructure could cut output by 500,000 barrels a day for four to six months from September.

Fears of supply disruption at Opec members, including Iraq and Libya, have pushed oil prices higher recently, the IEA said. US benchmark West Texas Intermediate rose 9 per cent in July to hit a 16-month high. Prices have since fallen amid concerns about the global economy.

The work in Iraq will install a metering station at the export facilities near the southern city of Basra. The operation will last around a month, but will not significantly reduce average production because, “our export capacity from the south is now surpassing our oil production,” Wadi said.

Iraq increased its export capacity last year when it installed two new offshore terminals called single point moorings, or SPMs, in the Persian Gulf, each with a capacity of 850,000 barrels a day. Older export terminals, Basra and Khor Al Amya, both can handle around 1.6 million barrels a day, bringing the total export capacity of these four terminals to 3.3 million barrels a day.

Iraq has been exporting between 2.2 million and 2.3 million barrels a day from its southern oil fields in recent months, according to its State Oil Marketing Organisation. The country is currently producing around 3.2 million barrels a day and targeting 4.5 million barrels a day next year.

Iraq said last week it is going ahead with its plans to boost production by 360,000 barrels a day by the end of this year or early next year. Abdul Mahdy Al Ameedi, head of the oil ministry’s petroleum contracts, said that the extra barrels will come from three new oil fields, Majnoon, West Qurna-2 and Garraf, which are being developed by the Anglo-Dutch giant Royal Dutch Shell PLC, Russia’s second largest oil producer Lukoil OAO Holdings and Malaysia’s Petroliam Nasional Bhd. respectively.