Iraq plans to boost its fuel production with new oil refineries to counter crippling gasoline shortages and a thriving black market, Oil Minister Ibrahim Bahr Al Uloum said.

A new refinery at Nassireyah in the south is planned to process 300,000 barrels per day (bpd) and a plant at Hindeyah, south of Baghdad, will run 140,000 bpd, Uloum said.
At least 10 international oil firms are in the race to build the $1 billion Hindeyah project, and the winners will be picked by the end of the year, he said. The refineries will take several years to build.
The founding stone for the biggest refinery in the Central Euphrates will be laid in December, Uloum said.
Iraq has the world’s third largest known reserves of oil but decades of war, sanctions, under-investment and now widespread violence and sabotage have left it critically short of fuel. It has to import nearly half of its gasoline.
The government continues to control prices, fostering a thriving black market in fuel for those unwilling to queue for hours, sometimes days, to fill their vehicles and able to afford prices many times the official rate.
Uloum also said crude supplies to the 310,000 bpd Baiji refinery in the north had resumed four days ago after an attack on a gathering centre of at least nine pipelines which feed the plant.
Oil officials say Iraq’s eight refineries are now operating at only 50 per cent to 75 per cent of capacity, a rate of around 300,000 bpd, forcing the country to import most of its refined products. The three largest refineries are Baiji, Basra and Daura plants.
Iraq has announced that it will increase drastically the prices of domestic fuels in order to stop smuggling of oil to neighbouring countries.