The delayed project to swap Kirkuk oil from Iraq to Iran was launched last week.
Seyyed Hamid Hosseini, secretary general of Iran-Iraq Chamber of Commerce, made the statement on Monday, ISNA reported.
"As per the deal 80 oil trucks are sent to Iran every day," he said, adding that Baghdad remains committed to other bilateral agreements, including laying a pipeline for swapping Kirkuk oil.
The two countries agreed last year to swap up to 60,000 barrels per day of crude from Kirkuk for Iranian oil to be delivered to southern Iraq.
Iraq agreed last year to send oil from the northern Kirkuk Oilfield to Iran for use in a Kermanshah refinery and Iran would deliver the same volume of crude at Iraq’s southern ports.
The first swap operation started in July, yet according to Iraqi Oil Minister Jabar al-Luaibi it was halted due to logistical problems.
"The agreement’s implementation has been delayed. We are now in the final stages of implementation. As soon as the issues are resolved, we will implement,” Luaibi told Reuters in June.
Asked about the long delay, the chamber official noted that the energy sector in Iraq is not integrated and has a bloated bureaucracy. In other words, contracts need to be approved by several authorities and this makes an agreement with the Oil Ministry all the more difficult. And then there is procrastination when it comes to finalizing oil projects.
Rejecting claims that Iranian businesses cannot enter Iraq's energy sector, he said, "A number of Iranian firms are active in oil ventures" in the neighboring Arab nation. He did not elaborate.
On Iran's role in the Baiji Oil Refinery renovation—the largest oil refinery in Iraq that used to produce a third of the country's oil before it was destroyed by the IS terrorist group — Hosseini said talks are continuing and Iranian contractors are expected to play a role in the project.
Referring to talks with the country's gas company, he said Iraqi officials are interested in drawing on Iran's expertise in utilizing liquefied petroleum gas not only in their cars but also for residential and industrial units.
Iran currently exports 14 million cubic meters per day of gas to Baghdad from Naftshahr city in Kermanshah Province through a pipeline diverging from the Sixth Iran Gas Trunkline. Basra, Iraq's second largest city also needs Iranian gas to feed its power plants as part of efforts to reduce outages that have become a persistent irritant and source of public discontent.
