Work is underway to expand capacity of Iraq’s Khor al-Amaya (KAOT) oil terminal to 1.2mn b/d, and enable 1mn barrel Suezmax tankers to use the offshore facility. Current nameplate capacity is 600,000 b/d, but ageing facilities mean that something in the 400-600,000 b/d range is more realistic.
Current operational export capacity from southern Iraq is somewhere around 3.6mn b/d. Along with Khor al-Amaya, there is the 1.6mn b/d Basra Oil Terminal and three single point mooring (SPM) systems each with design capacity of 800,000-900,000 b/d – however in reality they can operate at little more than half of this (MEES, 16 September 2016). (CONTINUED - 408 WORDS)
