Iraq oil production rises 15 percent in southern fields (to 1.95 mbpd)

[Barrett808]

BASRA, Iraq (AFP) - Crude oil production in southern Iraq has reached 1.95 million barrels a day (bpd), a 15-percent rise over the average output of the past 10 months, the Southern Oil Company director has said.

"Since yesterday (Monday) production levels reached 1.95 million bpd," Jabbar al-Luwaibi told reporters on Tuesday. "Average production over the last 10 months has been 1.7 million bpd," he added.

On May 23, then interim oil minister Hashem al-Hashemi said Iraq's total oil production for the northern and southern fields reached 2.1 mpd in April, the highest level since the 2003 fall of the old regime.

An average of 1.62 mpd was exported in April, or the equivalent of the average daily exports in 2002, according to Hashemi.

(more)

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20060606/wl_mideast_afp/iraqoil

[Norquist Nemesis]

1. Good News!! Good News!!

And in the southern area, Iraqi troops stood up while we stood on the sidelines!

The way things are going, they'll be home by Labor Day!

[hughee99]

2. Labor day, which year? n/t

[saigon68]

3. you missed the sarcasm tag

[Synnical]

4. Export out, truck back in

http://csmonitor.com/2006/0524/p20s01-woiq.html

(Oil tanker driver) Dakh has been in The Line in Iraq now for 12 days. He doesn't expect to cross the border into Turkey, a tantalizing four miles away, for another week.

. . .

The Habur Border Gate, at the northern fringe of this fast-growing Kurdish city, is a magnet for truckers for a simple reason: it is the safest way in and out of Iraq. But The Line, or, in Turkish, Kuyruk, also reflects a bitter irony of postwar Iraq: One of the world's most oil-rich nations has so few working refineries and pipelines that it has to truck crude oil out, only to truck it back in as gasoline, propane, and other fuel.

Iraq imports at least a third of the 5.5 million gallons of gasoline it consumes daily, and has set aside $2.4 billion for the import of petroleum products this year, says Ehsan Ulhaq, head of research at PVM Oil Associates, an energy consulting firm in Vienna.