TIKRIT, Iraq, March 10 (Xinhua) -- The Iraqi oil ministry said on Saturday that the first-phase rehabilitation of an oil field in Iraq's central province of Salahudin has been fulfilled.
The rehabilitation of Ajil oil field, some 30 km east of the provincial capital Tikrit, was fulfilled in a short time despite the huge destruction of the installation as well as its pipelines and pumping stations, Oil Minister Jabbar al-Luaibi said in a statement.
"The production capacity of the field after the first phase of rehabilitation reached 17,000 barrels per day (bpd)," Luaibi noted.
He also said Iraq's North Oil Company (NOC), which runs Ajil oil field, managed to increase the natural gas production capacity of the oil field to 100 million cubic feet (2.83 million cubic meters) a day.
According to an NOC oil engineer, efforts are being made to restore the oil field to its previous production capacity of 35,000 bpd.
Ajil oil field and the nearby oil field of Allas were seized by the IS in 2014 and became an important source of funding for the IS group, which extracted about 10,000 bpd from them.
The two oil fields were sabotaged by the extremist group before it was cleared from the area.
