There’s an interesting piece in the FT today about how oil output is steadily decining in Iraq due to over explotation of existing wells and the difficulties in attracting the technical staff necessary for serious development of new capacity:

Iraq’s oil industry has gone backwards since the fall of Mr Hussein in the spring of 2003. Oil production is barely more than 2m barrels a day, a far cry from the 3.5m b/d Iraq pumped before the first war with the US in 1990 and the level industry analysts thought the country could again achieve within a couple of years of the war ending.

The latest figures show Iraq produced 1.24m b/d in November, the lowest level in a year. Iraq’s capacity to produce oil appears to be declining, possibly because its southern fields are being driven too hard and damaged by officials keen to compensate for losses to production from the north, which has been hampered by frequent sabotage.