by Armando Cordoba

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – Iraq’s Kurdistan Region expects to produce one million barrels of oil per day (bpd) by 2015, an ambitious fivefold increase over current output, the autonomous northern enclave’s natural resources minister says in a report.

“One million barrels per day by 2015 is achievable with the existing discoveries,” Ashti Hawrami predicts in a report released this week by Invest Group LLC.

Current production of about 200,000 bpd is set to rise to 250,000 barrels by the end of 2013, with hopes of raising it to one million bpd by 2015. And by 2019, the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) expects exports of two million bpd.

“The expectation is that by 2019, the region could be exporting around two million bpd, with a further one million bpd going into the northern pipelines from fields in other areas of the north of Iraq,” Hawrami says in the report.

“So the northern route through the Kurdistan Region to the market for oil and gas will play a vital part in Iraq’s future economic prosperity,” Hawrami adds.

In order to achieve this goal the Kurdish government has already signed a deal with Turkey to transport 420,000 bpd of crude oil, and the pipeline to do so has an estimated completion date of mid-2014, according to the report.

In order to ship the fuel to Turkey the completion of the Kurdistan Iraq Crude Export pipeline is set for the end of 2013.

The pipeline will go from Taq Taq to Khurmala, then from Khurmala to Fish Kabur, according to the Kurdistan Ministry of Natural Resources, which Hawrami heads.

By the end of 2013, Kurdistan will have invested between $15 billion to $20 billion in oil and gas fields. It has 14 upstream projects, 45 billion barrels in oil reserves and 57 discovered oil and gas fields.

RUDAW