Officials said the Iraq Army would increase deployment around the oil fields at Kirkuk. They said the Oil Ministry hopes the bolstered military presence would lead to a significant decline in insurgency strikes.
"We already have a military presence there and we're going to reinforce it," Iraqi Oil Minister Hussein Shahristani said during a Sept. 11 briefing at OPEC headquarters in Vienna.
In 2006, the Oil Ministry renewed oil production and exports from the Kirkuk fields to Turkey, Middle East Newsline reported. The northern fields produced an estimated 8.5 million barrels of crude in July.