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BAGHDAD (AFP) - Iraq (news - web sites)'s battered oil industry is managing to produce 1.5 million barrels per day (bpd), the top US official in the occupied nation said. "Yesterday we produced 1,624,000 barrels of oil. We've been averaging about 1.5 million barrels a day for the last 10 days," Paul Bremer told reporters here Sunday. The chief executive of Iraq's oil ministry, Thamir Ghadhban, said Tuesday that the country's oil production capacity had increased to nearly two million (bpd). He said at least one million bpd of sustainable export capacity would be "achieved very soon". The Iraqi oil...

ROSY SCENARIO, Iraqi version, suddenly finds herself out of favor. Not so long ago, she was the belle of the postwar ball. With a bit of tweaking by highly skilled American technicians, and some money that could be generated by the sale of oil, Iraq's industry would be restored to its pre-Saddam glory. Oil would flow in sufficient quantities to dampen the upward pressure on prices, new areas would be opened to foreign investors--or American and British investors, anyway--and the stricken nation's economy would float to prosperity on a sea of black gold. That is not to be. Thamir Ghadhban,...

Iraqi Oil Exports Restart Despite Pipeline WoesSun June 22, 2003 11:35 AM ET By Asli Kandemir ANKARA (Reuters) - Iraq took its first steps back into the world oil markets since the U.S.-led war when one million barrels of crude oil were loaded onto a tanker at the Turkish port of Ceyhan Sunday. Post-war looting and sabotage at oil facilities have delayed the resumption of Iraq's oil exports, crucial to the country's recovery after a decade of economic sanctions, and an explosion on a pipeline Saturday was the latest blow. The blast near the town of Hit northwest of Baghdad...