BAGHDAD: Iraq Opec’s second-largest producer, could transport up to a million barrels of oil per day through Jordan once work begins on a pipeline linking crude from southern Iraq to the kingdom’s Red Sea port city of Aqaba.
“That project is still in place and we’re going to go ahead with it. We need another outlet for our crude oil,” Ali Nazar Faeq Al Shatari, deputy director general for Iraq’s state-owned oil marketer SOMO told The National on the sidelines of an energy conference in Abu Dhabi.
Export capacity could reach up to 1 million bpd, with some of the oil to be sent to Jordan’s expanding refinery at Zarqa in the country’s south, for domestic use with the remainder dedicated to export, he added.
Iraq has been looking for alternative routes besides its southern Basra and northern Kirkuk terminals to take its crude to market as it looks to rebuild the country after decades of war and internal conflict. Plans for a pipeline to transport oil from the southern Rumaila field had gathered steam after the Jordanian cabinet approved plans to link Basra to the port of Aqaba in February.
