Iraq's crude oil exports rose to 1.90 million barrels a day in May, up 4.39% on April, the head of the State Oil Marketing Organization told Dow Jones Newswires Tuesday.
Iraq exported an average of 1.45 million barrels a day from its southern oil fields through the Basra oil terminal, Falah Alamri said. The remaining 450,000 barrels a day were exported from northern Iraqi oil fields via the Turkish Mediterranean port of Ceyhan, he said.
The increase of 80,000 barrels a day on the month was due to the fact that surface maintenance was carried out at oil production facilities in southern and northern Iraq in April, Alamri said.
He said it was also due to the fact that in May Iraq's self-ruling Kurdish authority started pumping around 10,000 barrels a day from Kurdish oil fields to the northern export pipeline in preparation for the official start of exports June 1. The Kurdistan region Monday started exporting 100,000 barrels a day from Kurdish oil fields for the first time after foreign companies developed two big oil fields, Tawke and Taq Taq.
Revenue from crude oil sales in May rose to around $3.2 billion, the highest in the first five months of 2009, up from $2.6 billion in April, he said.
Total oil revenue during the first five months of 2009 was more than $12.5 billion, the SOMO chief said.
Iraq is currently producing around 2.4 million barrels a day and it has invited international oil companies to upgrade several oil fields in a bid to bring production to 4.5 million barrels a day within the next three to five years.