BP has increased the amount of oil it is lifting from Iraq as payment for work it has completed in and around Basra, company sources told news site Reuters.
Baghdad has been forced to delay payments to IOCs as the fight against militants takes its toll on the country’s resources. BP has been permitted to take oil shipments in lieu of cash payment.
Michael Townshend, BP’s president in the Middle East, ‎said current total production from Iraq’s giant Rumaila field was about 1.4 million barrels per day and was expected to remain steady in 2015.
“In terms of the position we have on Rumaila, the payments have picked up and I’m comfortable where they are,” he told reporters in Abu Dhabi.
“We get paid by liftings…either out of Ceyhan or out of the south…We certainly got more liftings in the last couple of months.” He did not give details of the liftings.
BP has also extended an agreement with Iraq’s Ministry of Oil to help arrest declining production at the huge northern Kirkuk oilfield, Townshend said. Kirkuk is currently disputed between the central government in Baghdad and Iraq’s Kurdish region.
“We had a letter of intent, which was for a year, and we extended that until the end of this year because there was a time last year where we couldn’t do anything productive.”
