Iraqi Oil News

Tankers carrying Russian oil have continued sailing through the Red Sea largely uninterrupted by Houthi attacks on shipping and face lower risks than competitors, according to shipping executives, analysts and flows data.Russia has become more dependent on trade through the Suez Canal and the Red Sea since it invaded Ukraine, which led to Europe imposing sanctions on Russian imports and forced Moscow to export most of its crude to China and India. Before the war, Russia exported…

A mine that was attached to the hull of an Iraqi oil tanker was defused two days after it was discovered, Iraq's military said in a statement on Saturday.The tanker was in international waters about 28 nautical miles (52 km) off Iraq's coast in the Gulf and supplying another ship with fuel when the device was discovered on Thursday afternoon.An investigation has been opened to find out the circumstances of the incident.The military said on Friday that it was not immediately clear how the mine was attached to the tanker…

Russian oil producer Gazprom Neft said that its subsidiary Gazpromneft-Badra has now produced 13.5 million tonnes — or 100 million barrels — of oil in Iraqi oil field.Cumulative production at the Badra field in the five years since this asset went into commercial operation has reached 100 million barrels — the first shipment of liquid hydrocarbons having taken place in 2014. Oil production at the field stands at more than 1.8 million tonnes (13.5 million barrels) since the start of 2019.Twenty-two operating wells, each running to an average depth of 4,500 meters, have been drilled by Gazpromneft-Badra since discovering this asset. The…

War with Iran is the mother of all wars, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said on Tuesday in a speech broadcast live on state TV, warning once again that shipping might not be safe in the Strait of Hormuz oil waterway.Tensions have risen between Iran and the West since last year when the United States pulled out of an international agreement which curbed the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program in return for an easing of economic sanctions on Iran."Peace with Iran is the mother of all peace, war with Iran is the mother of all wars," Rouhani said at the Foreign Ministry in a speech which also praised Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif after the United States imposed sanctions on him on July 31.If the United States wants to have negotiations with Iran then it must lift all sanctions…

Iran will no longer turn a blind eye to "maritime offences" in the Gulf, its foreign minister said on Monday, a day after it seized an Iraqi oil tanker there that it accused of smuggling fuel.Revolutionary Guards seized the tanker and its seven crew near Iran's Farsi Island north of the Strait of Hormuz, state media reported, in show of power amid heightened tension with the West that minister Mohammad Javad Zarif blamed U.S. authorities for fomenting."Iran used to forgo some maritime offences in ... (the) Gulf but will never close (its) eyes anymore," Zarif told a news conference.He criticized U.S. sanctions imposed on him on Wednesday, saying Washington had closed the door to diplomacy over Iran's 2015 nuclear deal, which U.S.

Iran and Iraq have reached an agreement for joint development of the Naft Shahr and Khorramshahr joint oil fields, Iranian Minister of Petroleum Bijan Zangeneh said.Speaking on Sunday, on during a visit to the Energy Industries Engineering and Design (EIED, an affiliate to the Oil Industries' Engineering and Construction (OIEC)), the official said: "There are massive potentialities for expanding Iran-Iraq cooperation in oil, gas, refining and petrochemicals grounds, and Iran is ready to offer itself capabilities to the Iraqi oil industry.”He added that Thamer al-Ghadhban, Iraqi minister of oil, during a visit to EIED, learned about the capacities of the company…

Booming U.S. oil exports have set off a scramble to build Gulf Coast ports to handle more than 3 million barrels per day in new supplies expected over the next five years.Of seven proposed oil-export projects, nowhere is the opportunity greater or the competition more fierce than in Corpus Christi, Texas, where three firms are vying to open the state's first deepwater port.Commodities trader Trafigura has taken an early lead with a planned offshore facility that has an easier…

Indian Oil Corp (IOC) issued a global tender to charter scrubber-fitted oil tankers for at least five years to import Iraqi oil, a tender document seen by Reuters showed.The tender says Indian shippers will be given first right of refusal for the contract as the nation seeks to boost its shipping industry. It is seeking bids from vessels that are less than 10-years old.A scrubber is a product that strips out sulphur emissions and, in doing so, can allow shippers to use dirtier fuel oil but still meet new global requirements for lower emissions.IOC and the country's second biggest state-owned refiner, Bharat Petroleum Corp (BPCL), last year also issued similar tenders seeking vessels for five years.The two refiners…

Al-Iraqia Shipping Services & Oil Trading (AISSOT) is shortly commencing bunkering operations at Iraqi Ports mainly at Basra, Khor Al-Zubair and Umm Qasr. AISSOT is a joint-venture company of Iraqi Oil Tankers Company (IOTC) & Arab Maritime Petroleum Transport Company (AMPTC) to handle plethora of activities ranging from Trading of petroleum products, Ship chartering, Oil terminals, various Marine services, and Bunkering. Iraq ports are growing exponentially as shipping hub over the years and AISSOT is confident to cater to all marine related needs of the shipping lines calling Iraq, anchorage area and nearby ports by offering them end-to-end bunkering solutions meeting international standards on quality and safety.

U.S. President Donald Trump accused OPEC on Friday of "artificially" boosting oil prices, drawing rebukes from some of the world's top energy exporters."Looks like OPEC is at it again. With record amounts of Oil all over the place, including the fully loaded ships at sea. Oil prices are artificially Very High! No good and will not be accepted!" Trump wrote on Twitter.It was unclear what triggered the tweet, Trump's first mention of OPEC on social media during his term.U.S. oil prices are near a three-year high…

Oil exports from southern Iraq have fallen by 70,000 barrels per day (bpd) this month, according to shipping data and an industry source, suggesting OPEC's second-largest producer is heading for a third month of lower shipments. Southern Iraqi exports in the first 21 days of March averaged about 3.36 million bpd, compared to 3.43 million bpd in February, shipping data followed by Reuters and independent tracking by an industry source showed. The fall suggests there is still no…

Iraq plans to acquire a "large fleet" of oil tankers to transport the OPEC nation's crude to global markets, Oil Minister Jabar al-Luaibi said in a statement on Friday.   The nation's tanker fleet was largely destroyed during the U.S.-led offensive to dislodge Iraq from Kuwait in 1991, according to the state-run Iraqi Oil Tankers Company's website. The company owned as many as 24 tankers in the 1980s.   "The ministry is keen to restructure the company and develop its operations by building and buying a large fleet of tankers," Luaibi told the company's management, according to the statement.   Iraq is OPEC's second-largest producer, after Saudi Arabia.   Reporting by Maher Chmaytelli

Nearly 30 large oil tankers waiting to load at Basra; daily VLCC tanker rates have doubled to nearly $75,000. A traffic jam of nearly 30 large oil tankers has built up outside the Iraqi port of Basra due to loading delays, with some waiting up to three weeks and costing ship operators around $75,000 a day per vessel. Shippers and port sources said more delays are expected throughout April as the city's facilities struggle to cope with Iraq's soaring crude output. The problems at Basra, coupled with continuing storage tank shortages in China, have pushed supertanker rates from the Middle East to Asia to unseasonal highs as the delays disrupt future sailing schedules and charterers cover future tonnage requirements.

Oil rose on Tuesday to above $31 a barrel on hopes that OPEC and non-OPEC producers were inching closer to a deal to reduce output in the face of one of the biggest supply gluts in decades. The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries is making renewed calls for rival producers to cut supply alongside its members, but Russia, seen as key to any deal, has so far refused to cooperate. Iraqi Oil Minister Adel Abdel Mahdi said on Tuesday he saw "some flexibility" for a deal, an idea has been repeatedly mooted and dismissed for over a year. Brent crude was up $1.02 at $31.52 a barrel by 11:05 a.m. EST (1605 GMT), rebounding from a decline earlier in the session. On Jan. 20, Brent reached as low as $27.10, its lowest since November 2003. U.S.

Sellers of a new grade of Iraqi oil are competing fiercely to win market share on the U.S. Gulf Coast, though high sulfur content has limited appeal for refiners of the crude, known as Basra Heavy. Iraq's State Oil Marketing Organization (SOMO) began selling the crude with an API gravity of about 23 degrees in May after separating it from the Basra Light stream to resolve quality and consistency issues and reach new customers. The first shipments of Basra Heavy to the U.S. Gulf Coast were modest. They peaked in October at nearly 2.5 million barrels, then plunged 80 percent in November. December arrivals have also been low, according to Reuters vessel tracking data.

Kurdistan reasserted its right to export oil independently to the United States and other countries on Tuesday despite a court ruling in favour of the Iraqi federal government, which has sought to block crude sales from the autonomous region. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in New Orleans on Monday dismissed the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG)'s bid to overturn an earlier ruling against a planned sale of oil to an unidentified buyer in the U.S. Iraq's federal government filed a lawsuit in a U.S. court last year to thwart the sale of the one million barrel cargo from the Kurdistan region in an ongoing dispute over the right to export oil. The tanker was stuck off U.S.

A sustained supply glut has maintained Brent oil prices through the first five months of 2015 at some 47 percent lower than the same period in 2014. Industry observers expect low oil prices to eventually take supply out of the market and drive a price correction, noted Douglas-Westwood. So, when will this happen? To-date, supply appears unaffected - latest figures from the EIA indicate that US production has risen almost 13 percent in the last 12 months. Saudi Arabia is much the same, production has hit a record rate of 10.3 mb/d.

Iraqi oil minister Adel Abdel Mahdi said on Tuesday he saw signs of improvement in the oil market, joining other OPEC officials in expressing an optimistic outlook just days ahead of the group's next meeting.   "There is an improvement, yes," he told reporters when asked about the market situation. The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) meets in Vienna on Friday.     (Reporting by Rania El Gamal; Editing by Dale Hudson)

A tanker delivered a cargo of disputed crude oil from Iraqi Kurdistan's new pipeline for the first time on Friday in Israel, despite threats by Baghdad to take legal action against any buyer. The SCF Altai tanker arrived at Israel's Ashkelon port early on Friday morning, ship tracking and industry sources said. By the evening, the tanker began unloading the Kurdish oil, a source at the port said. The Kurdistan Regional Government said on Saturday, a day after the news was first reported, it did not deal with Israel in the sale. "The KRG categorically refutes the claim that it has sold oil to Israel," a spokesman for the Ministry of Natural Resources said in an email.

After a legal show-down in Texas this week, the outlook for a handful of tankers holding some $300 million worth of Kurdish oil is not looking good. Seemingly unable to find enough buyers willing to take a risk on million-barrel cargoes of disputed crude, the Kurdish authorities are paying over $75,000 a day to keep all three far-flung vessels afloat. A fourth ship began filling up at a terminal on the Turkish coast on Thursday, potentially adding to the tally, Reuters reported. Unless they can seal last-minute discreet sales or reach some kind of deal with Baghdad over how to share oil revenues, experts say, chances are slim of unloading ships now dotted around the globe, from Texas to Malaysia. In total, they have already been at sea for nearly half a year.

A tanker carrying crude oil from Iraqi Kurdistan reappeared unladen on Aug. 19 about 30 kilometres off the coast of Israel, ship tracking data on Reuters showed. This is the second time the Kamari has appeared in the area in the last two weeks carrying Kurdish oil. The tanker Kamari was partly laden north of Egypt's Sinai on Aug. 17, tracking showed, before it turned off its satellite transponder until early on Aug. 19. It was not possible to determine where the oil had been delivered to or who the buyer was. A spokesman for the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) Ministry of Natural Resources did not immediately respond to phone calls and emails seeking comment on Wednesday. The KRG has previously denied selling oil to Israel "directly or indirectly".

The Iraqi oil ministry said on Thursday it would challenge a U.S. court decision that stopped U.S. Marshals from seizing some one million barrels of disputed Kurdish oil docked near Texas. On Monday, a U.S. district court ruled in favour of a request by Iraq's Kurdish region that a demand by the Iraqi government for U.S. authorities to seize the Kurdish oil shipment be scrapped. However, the court gave Baghdad 10 days to resubmit its case. "The ministry of oil is emphasising that it is preparing the amended request and will forward it in the required period," the oil ministry said in a statement. "The decision of the court is only to lift the seizure of the shipment while at sea. Therefore they referred to American maritime law.

Iraq said it filed a lawsuit against Greek shipping company Marine Management Services (MMS) for its role in the export of crude from the Kurdistan region, which Baghdad says is illegal. The case is the latest move by Baghdad to deter customers and thwart independent exports of crude from the autonomous Kurdistan region. The federal government claims sole authority to manage sales of all the oil in Iraq. The Iraqi oil ministry said on Thursday that MMS operated five vessels that had transported oil on behalf of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) from a Turkish port.