Iraq’s oil swap with Iran to start this month
Iraq will begin swapping oil from the northern Kirkuk fields to Iran this month at a rate of 60,000 barrels per day (bpd), Kirkuk’s governor told Reuters at a conference for the reconstruction of Iraq in Kuwait on Monday.
Iraq and Iran agreed in December to swap up to 60,000 bpd of crude produced from Kirkuk for Iranian oil to be delivered to southern Iraq, with the crude trucked to Iran’s Kermanshah.
Iraqi forces launched a security operation along the planned oil transit route last week to clear the area from armed groups.
Crude oil from Kirkuk used to be sent to the market via Turkey and the Mediterranean. Those sales have been halted since October when Iraqi troops regained control of the oilfields following a secession vote in the country’s Kurdistan.
It is yet to be seen whether Iraq will continue to operate the Mediterranean export route after the planned pipeline to Iran comes online.
Iraq’s Oil Ministry has said that the pipeline was “too damaged by attacks by Daesh terrorist gangs to be rehabilitated”.
Iraq exported 250,000 to 400,000 bpd through the pipeline before Daesh insurgency halted the supplies.
Iraq is currently producing 4.4 million bpd of oil, making it the second largest producer at the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) after Saudi Arabia.