The Kurdish regional government aims to increase increase the region’s oil production capacity to 2 million barrels per day (bpd) by 2019.
The target was announced by the Kurdish regional government’s natural resources minister Ashti Hawrami at a speech given to the World Energy Forum in Istanbul yesterday.
“If Iraq is serious about reaching 8 million bpd of exports, at least 3 million of it will come from the north,” Hawrami said. “Within a couple of years there will be additional infrastructure to get the isolated crude of Kurdistan to market.”
According to a report from Reuters, Hawrami also said that he wants companies to build pipelines so the fuel can reach foreign markets, confirmation that the KRG’s policy is to bypass the central government in seeking export routes for its crude, though Hawrami describes the pipelines as “additional capacity,” and has previously vowed to account to Baghdad for the region’s oil revenue.
Hawrami also reaffirmed the region’s aspiration to increase production capacity to 1 million bpd by 2015.
The problem for the Kurdish region is securing export revenues.
Production has been partially shut in at the region’s larger fields after the regional government called a halt to further exports via the central government’s Kirkuk-Ceyan pipeline until regular payments under the ‘Erbil Agreement’ – which is all but dead – are made.
A pipeline directly from fields in the KRG to the Turkish border is reportedly due to start operations in October, a step which is set to provoke a further decline in political relations between the KRG and Maliki administration in Baghdad.
The remaining production is consumed in the local market or exported as refined products. The region is looking to dramatically increase its refining capacity.
