Oil Production Fueled by Urbanization

 Urbanization in Iraq has been able to accelerate in the past three decades due to global factors, such as oil production. Yet, it seems that oil production was more successful prior to 1990 than it is today. Iraq has the ability to significantly increase their oil production yield by millions of barrels simply by instituting modern oil field management techniques and developing new fields.  If Iraq is able to do this, oil production may continue to be successful in urbanizing the Middle East like it used to.

Iraq is one of the top three largest proven oil reserves, with approximately 115 billion barrels. This may seem like a lot, but without a viable legal framework, the country of Iraq will have difficulty attracting the investment capital required for sustainable development across the nation and oil production. Iraq was at its peak production shortly before the Kuwait invasion in 1990. They averaged 3.5 million of barrels per day (mbd). After the invasion, along with the Gulf War, oil production quickly decreased due to international boycott. Production dropped to about 500,000 barrels per day (b/d). A couple years later, the UN Oil for Food Program gave permission to start petroleum exports again. Between 1991 and 2001, Iraq averaged around 2.5 mbd of oil production. 

In 2003, with Saddam’s fall, oil production started back up again and began to increase. Although production had resumed, it was not getting done quickly enough due to the damage of the wells and lack of materials. Because of this, local refineries had to strip extracted oil of its gasoline and re-inject the leftover into the wells. This brought about uncertainty in determining the total amount of oil that was being produced. 

As of 2006, oil production in Iraq was averaging 1.9 mbd, which is below its potential of 3 mbd. Oil production in Iraq continues to stay low due to the lack of equipment, spare parts and inadequate foreign investments. To consider investment of large sums of money into Iraq, international oil companies require legal and constitutional protection for foreign direct investment.

Sources:

Brunn, Hays-Mitchell, and Zeigler.  (2008)  Cities of the World, 4^th Edition.  Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. 

http://belfercenter.ksg.harvard.edu/files/xstandard/Chapter%20Five%20%20Dargin%20Rebuilding%20Sustainable%20Com.%20in%20Iraq(2).pdf