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Gold/Mining/Energy : Strictly: Drilling and oil-field services -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: SJS who wrote (15698)	3/20/1998 2:29:00 PM
From: pz	Respond to of 95453

Friday March 20, 11:29 am Eastern Time Iraq won't cut oil output as part of OPEC, NOPEC NEW YORK, March 20 (Reuters) - Iraq will not temper its oil production even if OPEC and non-OPEC nations decide to curtail theirs, Iraqi U.N. representative Nizar Hamdoon said on Friday. ''I don't think it's connected because we are a different package,'' Hamdoon said in reference to a recent initiative for oil-producing nations, from outside and within OPEC, to cutback production in the face of falling oil prices. This means that whatever solution other nations may reach, Iraq will continue to produce oil to its maximum production level. Iraq is one of the 11 members of the OPEC cartel and is expected to produce just under two million barrels per day of crude in March, including about 1.37 million bpd earmarked for export, according to U.N. overseers. Hamdoon's comments clarify those made in Monaco on Thursday by Iraqi Oil Minister Amir Muhammad Rasheed, who said Iraq ''will act with other members of OPEC and non-OPEC in the coming few weeks,'' though the oil minister would not specifically say that would mean have any impact on production. Unlike other producers, Hamdoon explained that Iraq's oil production is unique because most of its proceeds finance humanitarian aid to Iraq's 22 million people. Both Hamdoon and Rasheed are part of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's senior foreign policy making inner circle. Iraq still plans to sell up to $4 billion of oil in the next six-month tranche of the U.N./Iraq oil-for-food program, Hamdoon said. The U.N. last month allowed Iraq to sell up to $5.26 billion in the next six-month phase of the sale, but Baghdad insists that its handicapped oil-producing capacity won't allow that higher figure. Iraq is currently in negotiations with the U.N. about how to finance repairs. ''Even that figure ($4 billion in sales over six months), unless some money is allocated to repair the damage in the industry, we don't think can be reached,'' Hamdoon said. Hamdoon said it will take ''somewhere between $250 million to $300 million'' to ''accomplish at least the current figure we are talking about, the $4 billion'' in sales over six months. Both Baghdad and the U.N. await an early-April report by a U.N. team assessing Iraq's oil-exporting capacity. That team will leave Baghdad on Sunday and issue its report to U.N. staff in New York in early April, said Eric Falt, U.N. spokesman in Baghdad. The U.N. Security Council must devise a way to pay for the improvements to Iraq's oil infrastructure. Hamdoon said he didn't know how such improvements would be financed. Hamdoon said he had no idea when Iraq would submit to the U.N. a ''distribution plan'' that will trigger the start of the expanded oil-for-food sale. A second round of talks to bring about the distribution plan begin in Baghdad in a few days, Falt said.