A strike at Iraq's South Oil Company on Sunday is not expected to halt crude exports and is designed to pressure the government to improve the conditions of employees, an oil official said. "This will be a peaceful protest and will not lead to a halt in exports," the official told Reuters.
An oil ministry source said earlier on Sunday that the strike could stop production from the region that produces most of the country's exports.
Iraq's southern oil exports flowed normally at 1.2 million barrels per day despite the work stoppage that halted most oil production in the region, regional shipping agents and Iraqi oil officials said.
The tanker Lopaz was loading 24,000 bpd from platform number one at the Basra oil terminal offshore in the Gulf. The Castro Corona was also loading 24,000 bpd from platform three.
Forat al-Ali, an aide to Basra provincial governor Mohammad al-Wa'ili, whose political party threatened the strike, told Reuters the protest would last one day.
The strike follows demands by the Basra governor for a greater share of Iraq's oil revenue, which were around $17 billion last year, to be spent in the mostly Shia south.
The region accounts for most of Iraq's crude exports, which stood at 1.42 million bpd in June, including 1.55 million barrels of oil pumped through a northern pipeline to Turkey, whose flows have been sporadic due to sabotage since the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.
Some secular Shia leaders have demanded autonomy in the south, a sensitive ambition given the region's oil wealth.
A number of southern parties have been demanding from the central government a financial arrangement similar to that with the Kurdish north, which receives at least 17 percent of state revenues and spends them independently.
Political parties in the south have demanded greater control over revenues from the oil produced there and greater autonomy from Baghdad.
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