Baku, Azerbaijan, May 2
Trend:
Iran is fully prepared to start a delayed plan to swap crude oil from Kirkuk in northern Iraq, Abbasali Jafarinasab, managing director of Iranian Oil Pipeline & Telecommunication Co. (IOPTC), said.
Iran is waiting for Iraqi side's readiness to start the swap, Jafarinasab said, ISNA news agency reported May 2.
Iran has settled all problems on its side, the official said, forecasting that the project will start soon.
Earlier in April, Hamid Hosseini, secretary general of the Iran-Iraq Chamber of Commerce, said that during Iran's First Vice President Es'haq Jahangiri's recent visit to Baghdad, Iraq asserted that it is committed to the bilateral agreements, including laying a pipeline for swapping Kirkuk oil and importing natural gas from Iran.
"If crude oil transfer venture from Kirkuk is launched, close to 60,000 barrels of oil can be delivered to Iran per day," Hosseini said.
Earlier oil from the fields around Kirkuk was shipped to the Turkish port of Ceyhan via a pipeline owned and operated by the Kurdish Regional Government in northern Iraq.
Last December, Iraq and Iran reached an agreement for oil swap for one year.
The deal envisages transport of between 30,000 and 60,000 bpd of Kirkuk crude by tanker trucks to Kermanshah. In exchange, Iran will supply the same amount of similar-grade crude to Iraq’s southern ports.
The two countries are planning to build a pipeline to carry the oil from Kirkuk to avoid trucking the crude.
The pipeline could replace the existing export route from Kirkuk via Turkey and the Mediterranean.