Through absorbing foreign capital and playing a pioneering role in developing its oilfields, Iraqi oil officials are pushing to raise their output. Iraq has held three rounds of oil and gas auctions after 2003 when it was invaded by the United States Army. As a matter of fact their reserves have turned to a magnet for giant international oil companies. Last year companies including French firm Total, Anglo-Dutch Shell group and Petronas of Malaysia participated at Iraqi oil bids. The process led to the second round of oil bids put in by Iraqi oil officials for the development of ten oil fields. The bids were attended by the representatives of 40 major international oil companies.
However, Iranian energy officials regard the claims of their Iraqi counterpart as idealistic and do not acknowledge some figures given by them. But owing to the investments made on their energy sector, even if half of their promises are fulfilled, the second rank Iran currently holds in OPEC will decline, the position which must be kept based on Iran's prospect of development in twenty years.
At the moment several international news agencies quote Iraqi Oil Ministry as saying their production is going to raise by 900,000 barrels a day which would boost their total production to 3 million barrels a day and would cause Iran to fall to the position of the third biggest producer of OPEC.
Although such figures are not acknowledged by Iran's OPEC governor, Mohammad Ali Khatibi, but may be a source of concern, because if Iranian officials had participated in the first phases of investment in Iraqi oil industry, they could have turned that to a big opportunity. Iraq is limited by the shortage of oil terminals and pipelines to transfer and export its production and it has a short coastline, so it has depended heavily on transnational pipelines to export its oil. Iraq's narrow coastline is adjacent to that of Iran which could play a more important international role in transferring Iraq's oil exports. The opportunity for constructing four floating terminals and three sea pipelines in the southern city of Basra was lost.
Referring to the remarks made by an Iraqi oil official, Khatibi maintains that the output of Iran's neighboring country would lift up to 200,000 or 250,000 barrels a day not 900,000. But even such increase would be worrying for Iran since the total Iraqi production would reach at least to 2,750,000 barrels a day and 2, 200,000 barrels will be exported, as 80 percent of the country's production is for sale.
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