Northern Iraq oil exports suffer brief disruption

Crude exports from northern Iraq fell to 10,000 barrels a day, a fraction of the normal flow, due to technical faults and a temporary lack of storage at a Turkish port, an official at the state-run North Oil Company said. Exports dropped on Wednesday for about four and a half hours before returning to normal levels of 400,000 to 500,000 barrels a day through a pipeline terminating at Turkey's Ceyhan terminal on the Mediterranean Sea, said the official, who declined to be identified in line with company policy. Exports through the pipeline normally include 80,000 barrels a day from oil fields in Iraq's northern Kurdish region, the official said in an emailed statement. Iraq exported crude at an average rate of 2.135 million barrels a day in November, Falah Al Amri, the director of the State Oil Marketing Organisation, said on Dec-ember 1. It produced an average of 2.705 million barrels a day last month, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Iraq holds the world's fifth-biggest crude deposits, according to data from BP that also include Canadian oil sands. The government is seeking foreign funds and expertise to help increase energy exports to pay for modernising the economy after years of conflict, sanctions and sabotage.