The volume of oil exported by Iraq under UN supervision rose sharply last week to 16.8 million barrels, despite a dispute over the official price, the United Nations said Tuesday, August 28.
The total volume of crude, equivalent to 2.4 million barrels a day, compared with the level of 13.9 million barrels reached in each of the two previous weeks, the office administering the UN oil-for-food program said.
In the week ending August 24, there were five loadings each at Iraq's Gulf port of Mina Al-Bakr and the Turkish Mediterranean port of Ceyhan, the only two export outlets authorized under the UN sanctions imposed on Iraq in 1990. The average price of Iraqi oil last week was around $22.49 (€24.60) a barrel, and the sales earned an estimated $362 million (€397 million), the office said in its weekly update.
Iraq has exported 96.3 million barrels of crude since July 4, the start of the current phase of the program. The phase is the 10th since the program was established in December 1996 to enable Iraq to import essential goods under UN supervision.
Twelve new purchase contracts for 19 million barrels of crude were approved last week by the UN oil overseers and the sanctions committee. Last week, Britain briefly blocked agreement on the official price of Iraqi oil and demanded a change in the way it is set, so as to limit Iraq's ability to exploit fluctuations in the world market.
It later accepted the price for the rest of August in order not to disrupt supplies, but said it would agree to an official price for September only if the price-setting interval were cut from 30 days to 15 days.
In Baghdad, the official newspaper Al-Jumhuriya said on Monday that Iraq was "committed to prevent any change in what has been agreed concerning the fixing of the price of crude every 30 days." ― (AFP, UN)
© Agence France Presse 2001
© 2001 Mena Report (www.menareport.com)
