Iraq’s government is ambitious and it wants to make the most of the country’s oil and gas reserves. Plans for an expansion of the country’s refinery network have been circulating for years, but the war with IS has put these on hold. What’s worse is that the prospects for these plans are gloomy unless it gets a significant amount of external help. Before the war with IS engulfed OPEC’s second-largest exporter, plans were to add five new refineries to the network over a period of 20 years, starting in 2008. At the time, the refining capacity of Iraq stood around 886,000 bpd. Since then, the only progress made has been the start of construction of the Karbala refinery, as one expert, the former chief of the Energy Study Secretarial of OPEC, notes in an industry analysis. In it, Saadallah al Fathi quotes information from an unnamed industry insider who […]