Infrastructure of the Iraqi oil industry: status, path dependency issues and new challenges

Due to the resource orientation of the Iraqi economy, the infrastructure of the oil industry is considered as a prerequisite for the socio-economic development of Iraq. The authors believe that the development of the production and transport infrastructure for the extraction, processing and transportation of oil and petroleum products, with a sufficient mineral resource base and domestic demand for petroleum products, is constrained by both «inherited» problems and new challenges for the Iraqi oil industry. The current state and dynamics of oil production and refining capacities, characteristics of pipelines, ports and railways that can be used to transport oil and petroleum products of Iraq are analyzed. As the main problems of the «inherited» problems of the production infrastructure of the oil industry, the insufficiency of extracting and processing capacities, the obsolescence of technologies, the reproduction of the raw materials orientation of the Iraqi economy as a result of attracting foreign investment primarily in oil production are identified. It is determined that the most important «inherited» problems for the transport infrastructure of the oil industry are threats to the safety of transportation of oil and petroleum products; insufficient capacity of ports and railways; instability of transportation due to the low level of centralized management, as well as maintenance. New challenges for the development of the infrastructure of the oil industry associated with the decline in oil prices as a result of the decline in economic activity during the coronavirus pandemic, as well as the prospects for expanding the use of renewable energy sources to improve the quality of energy supply in distributed energy are shown. Further directions of research are formulated.