Iraq's crude oil exports during the first quarter of 2008 rose 22% from the year-earlier period, the head of the state-run oil marketing company, or SOMO, said Monday.
"We have exported an average of 1.92 million barrels a day during the first three months of this year," Falah Alamri told Dow Jones Newswires by telephone from Baghdad.
Some 1.569 million barrels a day were exported from southern Iraq, while the remaining 357,000 barrels a day were exported from northern Iraq, he said.
According to figures published by the oil ministry last year, the average exports in the first 10 months of 2007 were 1.58 million barrels a day.
Iraq resumed sustainable crude oil exports from northern oil fields starting from September 2007. Before that date, Iraq's oil exports from the north were idle barring a few days because of acts of sabotage against oil export pipelines and installations by unknown attackers.
Better security, which has prevented acts of sabotage that hampered the Kirkuk oil along the northern export pipelines, accounted for the higher exports figures this year.
Iraq's current production equates to some 3% of daily global demand, ranking the country as one of the world's biggest producers. Production ground to halt during the 2003 U.S.-led invasion. That stoppage, and the uneven return of the industry in the following four years, has been one of the biggest disruptions to global oil supplies.
However, the return of Iraq's crude oil exports from the north and steady exports from the south is an encouraging sign, oil analysts have said.
A U.S. government report released last week said Iraq earned more than $18 billion from oil sales in the first quarter 2008, an amount exceeded what Baghdad had earned in the whole of 2004 or 2006.
The U.S. report, from Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction Stuart Bowen, projected Iraq's oil revenue to top a record $70 billion this year.