Iraq, the second largest oil producer in the OPEC cartel, plans to sharply increase its output capacity to seven million barrels a day by 2022, its oil minister said Tuesday.

Iraq now has an oil production capacity of five million barrels per day (bpd) but is pumping just over 4.7 million under an OPEC output cut agreement.

“Our target is to reach seven million bpd by 2022,” Jabbar al-Luaybi said, while presenting oil and gas projects available for private foreign investors.

Luaybi said Iraq sits on proven crude reserves of 145 billion barrels but he is confident the figure will jump to around 250 billion barrels with sufficient investment.

Source: AFP