Iraq to increase its oil production

Iraq has renewed its determination to increase its oil production to 6 million barrels per day after the embargo imposed on it since August 1990 is lifted.

Iraqi Minister of Oil Amer Muhammad Rashid said in a statement to the Iraqi daily al-Joumhoreyah: "We are determined to exploit our gas resources in order to meet the requirements of the increasing local consumption of the liquid gas and to export the surplus."

The Iraqi dailies on Wednesday quoted the report published by the Iraqi Ministry of Oil in Baghdad as saying that Iraq had signed 1,620 contracts since the middle of 1999 to buy equipment and spare parts for the Iraqi industrial sector, adding that 50% of these contracts are still pending or under study or evaluation by the UN sanctions committee.

Meanwhile, oil affairs experts dispatched by the UN to Iraq on Wednesday headed for the Iraqi city of Karkouk in northern Iraq in the course of a tour aimed at visiting oil firms and evaluating the equipment necessary for increasing Iraq's production of crude oil.

A source at the UN said the delegation will stay in Karkouk for three days in order to hold meetings and make field visits to the Iraqi oil fields situated in northern Iraq before returning to Baghdad and then from there going to southern Iraq.