Iraq tackles Rumaila problems
Iraq's state-owned South Oil Company hopes to start tackling rising water levels at the Rumaila oilfields soon, but is hampered by a lack of equipment, a company official said today.
Water incursion is a frequent problem in mature oilfields and has plagued North and South Rumaila, the main contributors to the Basra Light export stream, for decades.
"The lack of advanced equipment in our company is the main reason for the delay in finding solutions to the rise in the water levels in the wells but we have a plan to deal with this defect soon," the official told Reuters.
In a report released last week the general inspector's office of the oil ministry raised the problem of water incursion and blamed bad management for the failure to resolve it.
Even under sanctions during the regime of Saddam Hussein, the oil ministry was seeking to procure the necessary dehydrating equipment.
Iraq depends almost entirely on its southern oil export terminals since sabotage has kept a northern oil pipeline closed for most of the last three years.
The South Oil Company official said exports from the south have reached 1.7 million barrels per day. He said the company aimed to increase exports by the beginning of next year and to raise output to 3 million bpd from 2.3 million bpd.
"The South Oil Company has a programme to increase oil production to 3 million bpd by the beginning of 2007," he said.
The Basra Oil Terminal has the capacity to handle a maximum of 1.6 million bpd and the neighbouring Khor al-Amaya terminal, which reopened last week, is capable of exporting around 240,000 bpd, other officials have said.