Iraq is planning to close its largest export terminal, Basra, which handles 1.5 million barrels of oil a day, for four days from Jan 14 to install a new oil metering system, head of the State Oil Marketing Organization, or SOMO, Falah Alamri said Friday.
"Crude oil exports from the terminal would be completely shut down for four days," Alamri told Dow Jones Newswires by telephone.
He said during the closure technicians will remove the old metering system and start installing new ones.
Installation of the new metering system would take two months, he said, but it wouldn't suspend export from the terminal for that period.
Alamri said that exports would be continuing from the nearby, but smaller terminal, Khor al-Amya, in smaller quantities of not more than 450,000 b/d.
Separately, an oil official said that there were two vessels currently loading crude from the Basra terminal and they loading would be complete by Jan. 14.
The new metering system would be installed by Parsons Corp., one of the largest U.S. companies working in Iraq. The project would be funded by the U.S. Project and Contracting Office, or PCE, in Iraq.
Iraq's oil metering system has been out of order since the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime and this has encouraged smugglers to ship oil and fuel from Iraq to Iran and other Gulf states, Iraqi oil experts and officials have said.
A U.N.-led watchdog has expressed concern over the delay in installing or repairing metering equipment. The International Advisory and Monitoring Board, created by the U.N. Security Council in 2003 to monitor the stewardship of Iraq's natural resources, has been calling for metering of oil production since March 2004.