Iraq shall retain high oil exports, Oil Minister says

Shafaq News/ Iraq can conserve its crude oil export capacity, the Iraqi Minister of Oil said today, Thursday.

The Minister, Ihsan Abdul-Jabbar, said in a statement to Shafaq News Agency, "many countries started reducing or casting away reliance on fossil oil because of its low economic feasibility," indicating, "gas and fossil oil will abundant in Iraq in the coming periods."

"Oil demand will drop with the diminishing production capacities of other countries. However, Iraq and some other countries will retain this ability because we have plenty of low-cost oil."

He continued, "this spurs us to invest in the highly-demanded low-cost oil and abandon high-cost fields."

"However, this does not mean we can maintain high reliance on oil revenues to fund the state's budget," he explained, "for instance, a 2.5% population growth means another million citizens, which corresponds to a 7% rise in power requirements. Therefore, it is unreasonable to rely solely on oil. We must seek other resources, like investing in petrochemicals."

Iraqi lawmakers, on November 12, 2020, passed an emergency spending bill to allow the cash-strapped government to borrow as the economy reels from low oil prices.