NEW YORK, Nov 12: Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Ahmad Chalabi said on Friday the Opec member could return its oil exports to pre-war levels by mid 2006.

“I expect we can do it by the middle of next year. We can increase by 500,000 barrels quickly if we de-cap the capped oil wells,” Chalabi, the head of the Iraq’s Energy Council, told Reuters following a conference in New York.

He said in Basra alone 200,000 barrels per day of production could be easily de-capped.

Soon after the US-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003, Kuwaiti and US fire-fighters capped some oil wells that had caught fire.

Before the war, Iraq exported about 2.2 million barrels of crude oil a day.

Looters siphoning oil to sell on the black market and insurgents attacking key pipelines have since curtailed exports.—Reuters