Iraq’s 80,000 b/d Nasiriya field back online: source

Iraq’s 80,000 b/d Nasiriya field back online: source

Iraq's 80,000 b/d Nasiriya field back online: source

Dubai, 6 March (Argus) — Production at Iraq's 80,000 b/d Nasiriya oil field in the south of the country has restarted after an eight-day outage, but the 400,000 b/d West Qurna 2 projects remains offline for maintenance, an Iraqi source said.

Operations at the Nasiriya field in the southern Dhi Qar province were halted on 25 February because of concerns over worker safety following renewed protests by university graduates demanding jobs. The province has seen numerous episodes of civil unrest including demonstrations against alleged corruption, opaque fiscal policies and a failure to provide basic utilities, and these have regularly disrupted output at the field. Nasiriya is currently producing at around 50pc of capacity, the source said.

Maintenance at West Qurna 2 is due to end by the middle of March, field director Hatim Abdul-Imam Khudair said last week. The maintenance work, coupled with the disruption at Nasiriya, contributed to Iraq failing to hit its Opec+ crude output target for the third consecutive month in February. Iraq's crude output stood at 4.175mn b/d last month, according to state-owned oil marketer Somo, 150,000 b/d less than its February quota.

Iraq's production was 120,000 b/d short of its output