"[Luaibi] said that the [oil] ministry wants to restructure the company’s mission to develop its work through building and owning a large and modern fleet of oil tankers that perform the operation of transporting and marketing of oil to all parts of the world," the IOTC said in a statement.
The minister had issued orders for the company to reach global standards of ocean crude transportation as well as training the staff needed for the task, according to the statement.
IOTC was founded in 1972 to aid the development of Iraq's burgeoning oil industry. The size of its fleet reached some two dozen vessels within less than a decade. The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) nation lost its tanker fleet during the Gulf War during which it was attacked by US forces in response to Iraq's invasion of Kuwait.
