OREANDA-NEWS. January 4, 2013. The first cargo with 2 million barrels of crude oil from Iraq's Halfaya Oilfield left Basra for China, indicating that CNPC's Halfaya Project has entered investment payback period ahead of schedule.

Halfaya Project is the first to become operational and begin investment recovery amongst the seven international projects that have won the second round of bidding in Iraq. Since the first phase of the 5Mt/a production capacity building project in Halfaya Oilfield became operational on June 16, 2012, 15 months ahead of contracted time limit, all indicators for production and operation proved to be better than expected. With daily oil output of 100,000 barrels, the field has produced 2.46 million tons of crude as of December 14. And it is expected to produce 2.7 million tons of crude by year-end. At present, the second phase of the project has been fully launched and the third phase is well under plan.

The second crude cargo is expected in late January.