BAGHDAD, May 18: Iraq is expected to restore full export capacity to the Iraqi-Turkish oil pipeline in July when rehabilitation work on a second pumping station is completed, an Iraqi oil official said in remarks published on Saturday.

Nadhem Mohammed was quoted by the state news agency INA as saying 80 percent of rehabilitation work had been done to the pumping station of the oil facility which was heavily bombed during the 1991 Gulf War.

The pumping station will be made operational during July after completing final repair, Mohammed said.

Repair of this station will enable Iraq to restore full export capacity via the Iraqi-Turkish pipeline, he added.

The designed capacity of the pipeline is around 1.6 million barrels per day (bpd).

The twin 1,049 km (655 miles) pipeline currently carries around one million bpd of Iraqi crude from the Kirkuk oilfields to Turkey’s Mediterranean coastal outlet of Ceyhan.

Sanctions-hit Iraq exports crude under an oil-for-food programme with the United Nations where proceeds from oil sales are used to buy humanitarian goods and infrastructure spare parts.

The UN Security Council on Tuesday unanimously approved the biggest overhaul of sanctions in years in an effort to speed up the delivery of civilian goods for ordinary Iraqis suffering the impact of the UN sanctions.

Baghdad slammed changes to the sanctions regime which it blamed on the United States but said it would continue to cooperate with the UN on the oil-for-food exchange.

Exports under the programme also flow from Iraq’s Gulf port Mina al-Bakr and recently have been running at an average of two million bpd.—Reuters