Iraq and US agree on plan to revive production of oil

Iraqi and American officials say they have agreed on a $ 1.6 bn plan to rehabilitate Iraq's oil industry over eight months.
"The rehabilitation plan is not to increase production, but to take it back to previous levels," said Shamkhi al-Faraj, head of the Oil Ministry's economics department. "It would focus on facilities that have been damaged. There will be some below-ground work, some studies, but basically it is above-ground," it was reported.

The new plan focuses on pipelines, pumping stations and other plants that suffered from a lack of spare parts and were disabled by widespread looting and sabotage after the war. The goal is for Iraq to be producing 2 mm to 2.5 mm bpd by year-end, Faraj said, and to reach its pre-war output of 2.8 mm bpd by spring.
The rehabilitation plan was developed by the oil ministry and the United States Army Corps of Engineers, which has overseen the post-war repairs of Iraqi oil fields; the Kellogg Brown & Root unit of Halliburton; and the Coalition Provisional Authority, according to Walid Khadduri, editor of The Middle East Economic Survey.

The head of the Corps of Engineers oil reconstruction effort, Brig. Gen. Robert Crear; the acting CEO of the Iraqi oil ministry, Thamir Ghadhban; and the provisional authority's adviser to the ministry, Phillip J. Carroll, recently signed a memorandum of agreement to start the plan, a Corps spokesman said.