March tanker nominations at Iraq's Basra oil facility has risen about 40 percent compared to early February, after power cuts and poor weather caused disruptions to exports, a port agent said on Monday.
The agent said they were seeing nominations over a two-week period increase to about 17 from 12 arrivals since February 1.
"Clearly operations have improved and that's why we are seeing things moving smoothly, you don't see as many tankers getting held up at anchorage," said a Middle East based port agent.
At the start of February, as many as seven to 10 tankers were seen at anchorage at any given time due to slow berthing operations and delays to loading.
"The waiting time at the anchorage was as long as a week, but now its around two days at the most," the port agent said.
There is currently just two tankers waiting at the anchorage just outside the southern oil terminal, the agent said.
The backlog of vessels and disruptions to operations at the terminals squeezed Iraqi exports to about 1.08 million barrels per day (bpd) in December, the lowest level since the US-led invasion in March 2003. Exports rose marginally to 1.11 million bpd in January and Iraq has pledged to supply about 1.57 million bpd of Basra Light crude oil for the first-half of this year.
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