In line with Iraq’s currently perilous finances and with its future target of increasing crude oil production to 7 million barrels per day (bpd) by 2027 at the latest, Baghdad last week announced plans to boost southern crude oil export capacity by 72 percent within the next three years. In this vein it signed a US$2.625 billion deal with South Korea’s Daewoo Engineering & Construction (Daewoo E&C) to build out the Al-Fao main export depot to the south of Basra. In broad terms, Iraq’s Undersecretary for Extraction Affairs at the Oil Ministry, Karim Hattab, affirmed the Ministry’s renewed intention to increase the storage capacity at Al-Fao to 24 storage tanks, each of 58 thousand cubic metres (around 365,000 barrels), for a total capacity of around 8.76 million barrels. This would add to the six storage tanks already in place and is to all intents and purposes a reiteration – […]