Iraq is working on a "master plan" to construct new infrastructure to boost the country's oil export capacity, after the award earlier this year of 10 large contracts to international oil companies, the country's Oil Minister Hussein al-Shahristani said Wednesday.
Shahristani also said new offshore pipelines would be constructed to replace ones that connect Basra and Khor al-Amaya terminals with crude deposits in Basra. A network of new oil pipelines will be also built in southern and northern Iraq.
"We are working on a master plan for new pipelines and export terminals," Shahristani told reporters on the sideline of a meeting of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries.
Two floating oil terminals are already under construction at the main Basra oil terminal in southern Iraq and work on two others will start soon, Shahristani said, adding the four platforms would be able to handle 2 million barrels a day. Basra and the nearby smaller Khor al-Amaya port currently can handle up to 1.6 million barrels a day.
"I expect these [floating] terminals to go through fast-track development to be ready in time when we have increased production," the minister said.
Foster Wheeler announced in February that it was awarded a contract by the Iraqi government for the basic engineering of new oil export facilities to supplement the existing Basra terminal. The new offshore facilities would include new single point mooring tanker loading buoys, together with oil pumping, metering and pipelines, to achieve an export capacity of 4.5 million barrels a day, Foster Wheeler said at the time.
The state of the southern oil export terminals, and particularly the subsea pipelines feeding them, have been a source of worry in the past decade. Persistent leakages and high levels of corrosion have raised fears of large offshore spillages with disastrous environmental consequences in the already strained upper Gulf region.
Iraq has awarded deals to global oil majors that it hopes will skyrocket its crude oil production to 11 million barrels a day in six to seven years from now. Iraq is currently producing 2.5 million barrels a day, well below the level before the U.S.-led invasion in 2003. Iraq exports an average 1.9 million barrels a day.
The ministry is planning to build a new pipeline to go with the existing strategic pipeline that connects southern and northern oil fields.
The ministry will also build a new pipeline to go with the existing northern export pipelines that links Kirkuk oil fields with the Ceyhan terminal in Turkey, Shahristani said.