With Iraq’s oil production in August hitting an all-time record high of 4.97 million barrels per day (bpd), according to local Iraqi sources, the country is virtually at the maximum oil production level that its current oil exporting infrastructure can handle. Moreover, this figure, impressive though it is, is still a long way off Iraq’s latest oil target production of 6.2 million bpd by the end of 2020 and 9 million bpd by the end of 2023. In order to monetise these flows for its hard-pressed budget and encourage further development of oil fields by international oil companies (IOCs), Iraq last week announced two key projects. The first of these is an idea that has been mooted since the removal of Islamic State from Iraqi territory and gathered momentum after the indicative vote for independence by Iraq’s semi-autonomous region of Kurdistan in 2017. This idea is the resuscitation – […]