Iraq deplores absence of Moroccan enterprises in Iraqi oil market

An Iraqi official has deplored the absence of Moroccan enterprises in the Iraqi oil market and said Iraq supports all forms of cooperation with Moroccan private and public enterprises in the frame of the oil-for-food program.

Secretary general of the Iraqi petroleum ministry, Faiz Abdellah Shahine, told MAP at a meeting with a visiting delegation of Moroccan journalists that Moroccan enterprises have not shown any interest in the Iraqi oil market while Algerian and Tunisian companies have made interesting offers concerning prospecting operations and even raw material exportation.

He added that in the perspective of the lifting of the embargo, Iraq has elaborated plans to increase its crude oil production to 7 million barrels per day. By end of 1999, this production did not exceed 3 million barrels per day in view of the serious damage caused to oil infrastructure, he said.

Iraq is however able to reconstruct all that has been destroyed by the war and the embargo experience has evidenced that Iraq has actually relied on itself and succeeded in freeing itself from dependence on foreign technologies as it acquired and mastered these technologies, the Iraqi official said, adding that his country's reconstruction capacity exceeds by far the destruction capacity of western forces.