Iraq’s oil: gush but worry
The news from Iraq is not all bad. Despite the war against Islamic State (IS) in the north and west, for three months in a row Iraq has pumped record amounts of oil. New wells operated by Lukoil, a Russian firm, at the vast West Qurna oilfield have come on stream. Iraq has found a […]The news from Iraq is not all bad. Despite the war against Islamic State (IS) in the north and west, for three months in a row Iraq has pumped record amounts of oil. New wells operated by Lukoil, a Russian firm, at the vast West Qurna oilfield have come on stream. Iraq has found a way to separate light crude from the heavier sort, enabling it to sell two types rather than an unpredictably adulterated blend, raising exports from 3.1m barrels a day (b/d) to almost 4m.
Kurdistan’s autonomous government is pumping out more oil, too. Thanks to the pipeline it opened in November that bypasses the IS-held city of Mosul, it is sending a record 550,000 b/d to Ceyhan, a port on Turkey’s Mediterranean coast. Despite the Kurds’ seizure last year of the oil-rich area around Kirkuk, whose ownership is disputed by Iraq’s Arabs, Kurdish oil officials are getting on better than before with their counterparts in Iraq’s central oil ministry in Baghdad. All told, a decade of investment is at last starting to pay off.
