Iraq will increase crude oil sales by 9.7% to 2.14 million barrels a day for the second half of 2008, the head of the country's State Oil Marketing Organization said.
"We are targeting a total of 2.14 million barrels a day during the second half of this year," Falah Alamri told Dow Jones Newswires in a telephone interview late Sunday. The export target rate set by SOMO for the first half of 2008 was 1.95 million barrels a day, the SOMO chief said previously.
Alamri said some 1.66 million barrels a day would be exported from southern oil fields while some 480,000 barrels a day would be sold from northern fields during the second half of this year.
During the first five months of this year, SOMO exported an average of 1.90 million barrels of crude oil a day, according to Oil Minister Hussein al-Shahristani.
The SOMO chief declined to say how many companies would lift Iraqi crude oil during the second half of the year, but he said five new companies had been added to the list of buyers of Iraqi crude oil. They are Toyota of Japan and Hyundai of South Korea to lift Basra Light crude and Samir of Morocco, Saras SpA and Preem to lift Kirkuk crude, he said.
Around 20 international companies have been lifting Iraq's Basra crude oil since the beginning of the year. They include majors such as BP PLC (BP), Royal Dutch Shell PLC (RDSA), Total S.A. (TOT), Chevron Corp (CVX), ExxonMobil Corp (XOM), ConocoPhillips (COP), and Eni SpA (E). While some 12 firms have been lifting Kirkuk crude via the Mediterranean port of Ceyhan. They include Shell, Total, BP, Cepsa, Repsol YPF SA (REP), ENI, Tupras AS (TUPRS.IS) and North Atlantic Refining among others.
Revenue from Iraq's sales of crude oil during the first five months of this year reached $28.5 billion compared with $40 billion in the whole of 2007, al-Shahristani told a rare parliament session held in Baghdad Saturday.
The minister expected Iraq's oil revenues to reach more than $70 billion in 2008 if oil prices remained high. In 2007, Iraq's oil revenue totaled $39.8 billion. Better security, which has prevented acts of sabotage that hampered Kirkuk oil along the northern export pipelines accounted for the increase in Iraq's output and exports, the minister said.
Iraq, whose primary source of revenue comes from oil, needs huge amounts of investment to boost oil output and to rebuild the country after years of sanctions and war.
Al-Shahristani said that the ministry spent $1.5 billion in investment to improve the Iraqi oil sector in 2007. "During the first five months of 2008, some $1 billion was invested in the sector," he added.
The ministry is currently negotiating with oil majors to sign six deals to boost production in Iraqi oil producing fields; each would increase output by 100,000 barrels a day. Iraq is currently producing around 2.5 million barrels a day.
The minister said lost revenue that could have been generated from crude oil exports and damage to oil sector installations caused by acts of sabotage were reduced to $250 million in 2007, from $6.25 billion in 2005. Lost revenue from such acts was further reduced so far in 2008.