BAGHDAD, Dec. 28 (UPI) -- Iraq needs foreign investors in the oil sector to help break a bottleneck at southern ports, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said.
"We have no restrictions on their entry. We want them," Maliki told The Wall Street Journal of foreign investors. "We need speed. We need money."
Maliki last year gave the nod to a series of oil deals aimed at boosting the country's oil production to more than 12 million barrels of crude oil per day in less than a decade. Exports and production, however, are limited in part by a lack of infrastructure at southern ports and a slow-moving political system.
Oil production has lingered at around 2.5 million barrels per day from Iraqi fields for years. Maliki said four new oil-exporting terminals off the coast of Basra, however, could push Iraq's export capacity past the 3 million barrel mark by September, a first since the U.S.-led invasion of 2003.
Maliki's one-time rival, Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr, recently issued a religious edict prohibiting work with foreign companies doing business in Iraq. The prime minister brushed the ruling off as "mere opinion."
