Iraq Focus on Increasing Refining Capacity to Reduce Fuel Imports

During a visit to the South Refineries Company last month, Iraq's new Oil Minister Hayan Abdel Ghani announced that his ministry's policy is to focus on increasing the refining capacity.

This resulted in the country – which is the second-largest oil producer of the OPEC+, producing 4.6 million barrels per day – to import most of its fuel needs.

Currently, half of the quantities produced by Iraq's refineries are fuel oils.

Iraq is spending more than $3 billion on importing oil products annually, including 1.07 million tons of gas oil at a value of $657 million, 3.46 million tons of gasoline at a value of $2.5 billion, and 163,000 tons of white oil at a value of $102 million.