Plans for new oil refinery in northern Iraq (25/11/04)

Iraq plans to build an oil refinery in the Kurdish north near the borders with Turkey and Syria, a senior Kurdish official and oil industry sources said.

Senior Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) official Nechirvan Barazani said the refinery would be situated in the Kurdish town of Zakho, on a pipeline that pumps Iraqi oil to Turkey. "A specialist American company will build the refinery," Barazani said, adding that the proximity of the pipeline would make it easier to transport Iraqi oil to the new facility.

The refinery will be situated in the Kurdish town of Zakho

A source in Iraq's state-owned North Oil Company said that plans for the refinery, around 500 kilometres north of Baghdad, had been in the works for around six months. Both declined to name the US firm or say how much the project would cost. It was also not clear when construction would begin or what the capacity of the new refinery would be.

There are at least eight oil refineries in Iraq, which has world's second largest oil reserves and capacity to refine 350,000 bpd. None are situated in the Kurdish north, which relies on the rest of Iraq and Turkey for refined oil products.

Most Iraqi refineries now operate below capacity, ravaged by 13 years of economic sanctions and war damage.

Since last year's US invasion, sabotage by insurgents bent on undermining the government has also hampered efforts to overhaul refiniries. The largely autonomous Kurdish north, which effectively broke from Baghdad in 1991, has seen less violence in the past year than other parts of the country.

Source: TradeArabia