LONDON, Nov. 30 (UPI) -- The leader of Iraq's oil workers, attending an anti-war conference here, says Iraq could be producing more oil by investing its own money, without an oil law or large scale foreign oil company involvement.

"National expertise and resources are capable of enhancing production in the oil industry," Hassan Jumaa Awad, president of the umbrella Iraqi Federation of Oil Unions, told United Press International Friday.

"If they are prepared to allocate more funding and spend the resources that already exist," he said, sporting the Asia Cup winning Iraqi National Soccer Team jersey, "there would be improvement and we could recruit more workers."

The IFOU is headquartered in the oil capital of Basra, where nearly 80 percent of Iraq's 115 billion barrels is located in or near and almost all the 1.9 million bpd of exports head to the Persian Gulf.

Although Saddam Hussein terrorized his population and mismanaged the oil infrastructure, many of the workers of the oil sector there received Western education in industry skills and became a large base of the so-called Iraqi middle class.