Iraq aims to boost its oil exports by nearly 26% to 3.4 million b/d in 2014, a senior official said Wednesday.
"Exports reached more than 2.7 million b/d this month, and the rate [that] is planned for 2014, including exports from the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, [is] around 3.4 million b/d," the Iraqi Prime Minister's Advisory Council Chairman Thamir Ghadhban told delegates at the Iraq Energy Projects conference in Dubai.
Ghadhban said he hoped Baghdad and the Kurdistan Regional Government will resolve their protracted dispute over oil jurisdiction and exports in the coming months.
Based on March nominations from the country's State Oil Marketing Organization, Platts estimates that Iraq will export 2.415 million b/d in March, up from 2.228 million b/d of actual exports in January and an average 2.39 million b/d in 2013.
The latest Platts survey of OPEC output puts Iraq's crude production at 2.96 million b/d in January.
Regarding the Iraq National Energy Strategy, Ghadhban confirmed that the country's medium-term target is to develop 9 million b/d of crude oil production capacity, although he also stressed that the strategy recommended taking a "dynamic approach, not to have one fixed scenario" with respect to oil development.
Under current government projections, Iraq would need 1.5 million b/d, or 16.7% of the target production capacity, as feedstock for its refineries to satisfy the country's expanding domestic appetite for petroleum products, Ghadhban said. Demand is growing by 10% annually, he estimated.
"We are now still a net importer of oil products," Ghadhban said.
Iraq hopes to have 1.5 million b/d of refining capacity in place by 2020, enabling the country to stop fuel imports and improve fuel quality, he said.
Ghadhban also expressed optimism that Iraq would be able to eliminate the wasteful practice of flaring gas production associated with its biggest gas fields as early as next year.
"We should be able by 2015 to capture most of the gas produced and have enough processing facilities to take up the increased production of gas," he said.
In early February, the US and Iraq agreed to cooperate on developing strategies to reduce gas flaring at Iraq's oil fields.
The US and Iraq also agreed to form a working group focused on combining mobile power generation technologies with reductions in gas flaring.
Shell, together with partners Japan's Mitsubishi and Iraq's state-owned South Gas Company, last May began operations on the Basrah gas project, which will capture and market gas currently being flared at the giant Rumaila, West Qurna 1 and Zubair oil fields in southern Iraq.
The project aims to produce 2 Bcf/d of gas when fully ramped up.
