Baghdad, July 07: Iraq is to put eight million barrels of crude up for tender to foreign oil companies by the end of July, a senior Iraqi official from the state oil marketing organisation told today. "Letters have been sent to the major petroleum oil players to invite them to tender bids for eight million barrels of crude extracted from the southern oil fields," the official said on condition of anonymity.
"The tender relates to four shipments from the al-Bakr terminal in the Gulf between July 10 and 31," he added.
He said the oil would be taken from Iraq's southern oil fields only, since the main export pipeline linking the northern fields to the Turkish Mediterranean terminal of Ceyhan remains closed, following a sabotage attack last month.
Getting large-scale oil exports up and running from Iraq is deemed essential to coalition efforts to rebuild the country in order to use export profits to fund the huge cost of reconstruction. Bureau Report