Iraqi refinery throughputs have been stuck at just over 400,000 b/d since the 310,000 b/d Baiji plant, the country’s largest, was overrun by Islamic State (IS) jihadists in June 2014. Though the plant was retaken by government forces in October it was badly damaged (MEES, 13 November 2015). No significant repair work has taken place and it will be years, if ever, before the plant fully functions again.
For Iraq as a whole, throughputs since July 2014 have been less than half the country’s nameplate 900,000 b/d refining capacity (including Baiji but excluding three plants totalling 139,000 b/d in the autonomous Kurdistan region). Typical runs are just two-thirds of the pre-Baiji outage figure: runs averaged 600,000 b/d in 2013 (see chart, and MEES, 1 April for full data) (CONTINUED - 804 WORDS)
