Iraq reopens refinery 10 years after it was recovered from the Islamic State

The prime minister of Iraq announced on Friday the reopening of the Beiji refinery, the country’s largest, which remained closed for a decade after being damaged in the fight against the extremist group Islamic State.

Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani said in a statement that the reopening of the refinery will allow Iraq satisfy its internal needs for petroleum products, saving billions of dollars annually that, he said, “will be invested in other services and aspects of the economy.”

“Iraq, with its production of more than 4 million barrels per day, continues to import derivatives of Petroleum”said al-Sudani. With the reopening of Beiji, he added, “we are close to meeting all the derivatives needs of Petroleum of the country, at most in the middle of the year.”

The Beiji oil refinery, 250 kilometers (155 miles) north of Baghdad, had not operated since the group Islamic State took the city as part of his raid on much of Iraq in the summer of 2014. The facility, which had a production capacity of more than 300,000 barrels per day, was seriously damaged in combat when Iraqi forces attacked to regain control of that strategic site.

Much of the refinery’s equipment was stolen. In August, al-Sudani announced that around 60 trucks of supplies and equipment that had been stolen from the facility were recovered and found in the semi-autonomous Kurdish region in northern Iraq.

In January, Iraq’s Electricity Minister announced that he received a proposal from a Qatari company to invest in the nearby Beiji thermal power plant. The plan includes the development of six production units to generate 2,100 megawatts.