Iraq's oil exports from its southern Basra terminal nearly doubled to 1.03 million barrels per day (bpd) on Sunday, up from 552,000 bpd on Saturday, but still below an average 1.6 million bpd, a shipping agent said.
An official from the South Oil Company told Reuters there were no problems with export or production facilities, but said flow had slowed on Saturday because storage was full and only one tanker was docked at the Basra port.
"We had to decrease crude pumping as there are few ships. We can't pump normally when only one ship is loading crude," a chief engineer from the company said.
Wild fluctuations of export levels, sometimes linked to bad weather or technical failures, have become commonplace at the Basra terminal. But Saturday's 68 percent drop in volumes was unusually steep. About three quarters of Iraq's oil exports flow through its Basra port.