ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – Iraq plans to extend a pipeline to export crude oil from one of its southern oil fields to Jordan, Iraqi Oil Minister Thamir Ghadhban said on Sunday.
The Iraqi oil minister’s comments came during a meeting in Baghdad with Jordan’s Energy Minister Hala Zawati who is on a visit to Iraq to discuss ways to boost bilateral cooperation in the oil, gas, and energy sector.
During the meeting, the two discussed the details of a project to extend a pipeline to export crude oil from the Rumaila area in the southern Iraqi province of Basra to the Jordanian port of Aqaba, a statement from the oil minister’s media office said.
“The supply of the Iraqi oil pipeline was discussed in accordance with a memorandum of understanding that will be signed later after obtaining the approval of the governments of the two countries,” it added.
According to the statement, the two sides also addressed ways to enhance the prospects of cooperation “to extract oil and gas and renewable energy” as well as an electricity project between the two countries.
The Jordanian minister, meanwhile, said her visit to Iraq “comes within the framework of enhancing bilateral relations” between the two countries.
Baghdad is reportedly aiming to increase the capacity of the country’s southern oilfields.
Earlier this month, the director of the state-run Basra Oil Company, Ihsan Abdul-Jabar, said Iraq wants to pilot a new offshore pipeline with a carrying capacity of 700,000 barrels of oil per day (bpd) by the end of 2019.
Iraq is the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries’ (OPEC) second-largest producer and currently has an output below its maximum capacity of nearly five million bpd.