Iraq oil exports could resume next week
 |
Basra oil facility in southern Iraq
Story Tools
VIDEO
|
CNN's Sonia Sequiera says Iraq's place in OPEC is unfilled because country lacks a standing government.
|
SPECIAL REPORT
|
|
|
BASRA, Iraq (CNN) -- One of Iraq's main offshore oil terminals is expected to reopen next week, which would mark the first time Iraq has exported its oil since the toppling of the Saddam Hussein regime, an Iraqi oil official told the U.S. civil administrator for Iraq.
Iraq's acting oil minister Thamir Ghadbhan on Wednesday gave administrator L. Paul Bremer a tour of the Basra's oil refinery and told the U.S. administrator that the facility's oil production has increased to almost pre-war levels -- about 140,000 barrels a day.
For the first time since the end of major combat, oil tankers could be filling up at Basra's offshore oil terminal to export Iraq's main natural resource as early as next week, the minister said.
Security has been less of a problem in Basra than in other areas of the country.
Earlier this month, Bush administration officials testified before a U.S. Senate panel that Iraq's oil production is now about 800,000 barrels per day and is expected to rise to about 1.5 million barrels per day later this summer, about 40 percent of its top pre-war output.
Production will increase to 2.5 million barrels per day by year's end, according to the officials.
At that rate, Iraq could receive between $14 billion to $15 billion per year in gross revenues, depending on world oil prices.
CNN Baghdad Bureau Chief Jane Arraf contributed to this report.
