Foreign staff were evacuated from Iraq’s giant Rumaila oilfield, run by British energy major BP, after two unidentified drones landed inside the field on Thursday, three Iraqi oil industry sources told Reuters.
“We are taking all necessary steps to support our partners and ensure the safety of our people,” a BP spokesperson told Reuters.
“We are continuously assessing the situation, have been communicating with those people under our duty of care and will address them directly should there be a need for any change.”
Two Iraqi oil officials told Reuters on Tuesday that the country had cut oil production by nearly 1.5 million barrels a day, adding those cuts could widen to more than 3 million bpd within days as the country runs out of storage and cannot export crude due to the Iran war. Iraq produced about 4 million bpd in January.
Output at Rumaila, which normally stands at around 1.4 million bpd, was reduced by 700,000 bpd, the officials said on Tuesday.
(Reporting by Aref Mohammed in Basra and Ahmed Rasheed in Baghdad; additional reporting by Shadia Nasralla, Editing by Emelia Sithole-Matarise)