"The security situation in Iraq over the last year has not helped the oil industry in the country to produce as much as Iraq can produce and make available to the world market," Hussain al-Shahristani told reporters this week on the sidelines of an OPEC summit.

"However, in the last couple of months there has been very significant improvement in the security conditions in the country," he said. "We have been producing more oil. As a matter of fact our production has almost reached 2.5 million bpd, up from about 2 million a few months ago."

Iraq has 115 billion barrels of proven reserves, the third largest in the world. But amidst a more than four and a half year war, following U.N. sanctions on development and decades of Saddam Hussein's misuse of the sector, Iraq has been struggling for most of the past year to produce even 2 million barrels per day.

The pipeline from the super giant Kirkuk oil field to a port in Turkey has been a particular victim of insurgents, whose attacks have kept the major export vehicle largely offline since 2003.

But this summer Iraq bolstered security around the pipeline, and it has flowed pretty constant, though not at capacity.

"Now we are seeing tribes that were actually collaborating with the insurgents to attack the pipelines are volunteering to defend those very pipelines," he said. "This has enabled Iraq to increase production by more than 300,000 bpd, making it available to the world market in the last month or so and that has helped quite significantly in making more oil available."

Shahristani said the U.S. surge in troops "has nothing to do with it."

"As a matter of fact the Multi-National Forces are nowhere near our oil field production or pipelines," he said. "It is only the oil protection force which is part of the Ministry of Oil structure that has been providing the protection for the pipelines."

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Ben Lando, UPI Energy Editor

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(e-mail: blando@upi.com)