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To: marc chatman who wrote (45158)	5/20/1999 6:00:00 PM
From: Wowzer	Respond to of 95453

Thursday May 20, 5:30 pm Eastern Time Two-week gap in Iraqi oil shipments-source NEW YORK, May 20 (Reuters) - Iraq will continue to participate in the United Nations administered ''oil-for-food'' program and first shipments of Iraqi crude oil for the next phase of the program will begin on June 10, an oil industry source told Retuers on Thursday. ''They (Iraq's State Oil Marketing Organisation) have told us that the first loadings will be June 10,'' an oil executive familiar with SOMO's plan said. Iraq is currently averaging daily exports of about two million barrels per day. The U.N. Security Council is expected to approve on Friday or Monday the 180-day sixth-phase of the Iraqi oil sales program, which has a sales ceiling of $5.26 billion. The oil executive said that a Russian oil company will pick up the first shipment from Mina al-Bakr on the Persian Gulf for resale to a U.S. company. The source declined to say which companies were involved. With Iraq's daily export rate of about two million barrels per day, the two-week delay will mean about 28 million barrels of oil taken from the world oil market. International oil traders for the past week have said they expected a two-week delay in Iraqi oil sales between the fifth and sixth sales phases. The oil-for-food program has allowed Iraq to sell oil outside of international trade sanctions since December 1996. Every six months the Security Council must approve another tranche of the limited oil sale in which about two-thirds of the revenues are used to purchase humanitarian supplies for Iraq's people. The sixth phase, if approved by the Security Council as expected, would run from May 25 to November 20. Diplomats from the five U.N. Security Council permanent members met on Wednesday and Thursday in an attempt to agree on the wider issues of Iraqi disarmament and the sanctions. Three of them, Russia, China and France, support at least a partial lifting of sanctions while the United States and Britain want to maintain sanctions but allow some foreign investment in Iraq's oil industry if Iraq cooperates with U.N. weapons inspectors. The five are not close to agreement on major points regarding the sanctions, diplomats said.