BAGHDAD: Iraq, despite many security and economic problems, has witnessed major success in some aspects of its energy sector. Oil exports have risen from less than 1m barrels a day in 2003 to around 3.5m b/d at the end of 2017. The problem is that for most of this period, the overwhelming volumes of exports were through Basra in the south of the country. With oil production capacity rising, the Basra facilities are beginning to strain under the load.
New ways of getting Iraqi oil to market are needed. Exports through the Iraq-Turkey Pipeline (ITP) to Ceyhan on the Mediterranean coast stopped in 2014 when a section inside Iraq was destroyed by the Islamic State (IS) group.
