Kirkuk Field is an oilfield at Baba Gurgur

Baba Gurgur

Baba Gurgur is a large oil field near the city of Kirkuk which was the first to be discovered in Northern Iraq in 1927....

 ("St. Blaze" in Kurdish) near Kirkuk

Kirkuk

Kirkuk is a city in Iraq and the capital of Kirkuk Governorate.It is located in the Iraqi governorate of Kirkuk, north of the capital, Baghdad...

, Iraq. It was discovered in 1927. The Kirkuk oil field was brought into use by the Iraq Petroleum Company

Iraq Petroleum Company

The Iraq Petroleum Company , until 1929 called Turkish Petroleum Company , was an oil company jointly owned by some of the world's largest oil companies, which had virtual monopoly on all oil exploration and production in Iraq from 1925 to 1961...

 (IPC) in 1934 and has ever since remained the basis of northern Iraqi oil production with over 10 Goilbbl of proven remaining oil reserves as of 1998. After about seven decades of operation, Kirkuk still produces up to 1 Moilbbl/d, almost half of all Iraqi oil exports. Oil from the Kirkuk oilfield is exported through the Kirkuk-Ceyhan Oil Pipeline

Kirkuk-Ceyhan Oil Pipeline

Kirkuk–Ceyhan Oil Pipeline is a long pipeline. It is Iraq's largest crude oil export line.-Technical description:...

, which runs to the Turkish port of Ceyhan

Ceyhan

Ceyhan is a city in southeast Turkey and with 105,000 inhabitants it is the second largest city of Adana Province after the capital Adana. Ceyhan is the transportation hub for Middle Eastern, Central Asian and Russian oil and natural gas. It is situated on the Ceyhan River, from which it takes...

 on the Mediterranean Sea

Mediterranean Sea

The Mediterranean Sea is a sea connected to the Atlantic Ocean surrounded by the Mediterranean region and almost completely enclosed by land: on the north by Anatolia and Europe, on the south by North Africa, and on the east by the Levant...

.

Some analysts believe that poor reservoir

Oil reservoir

A petroleum reservoir, or oil and gas reservoir, is a subsurface pool of hydrocarbons contained in porous or fractured rock formations. The naturally occurring hydrocarbons, such as crude oil or natural gas, are trapped by overlying rock formations with lower permeability...

-management practices during the Saddam Hussein

Saddam Hussein

Saddam Hussein Abd al-Majid al-Tikriti was the fifth President of Iraq, serving in this capacity from 16 July 1979 until 9 April 2003...

 years may have seriously, and even permanently, damaged Kirkuk's oil field. One example showed an estimated 1.5 Goilbbl of excess fuel oil being reinjected. Other problems include refinery residue and gas-stripped oil

Petroleum

Petroleum or crude oil is a naturally occurring, flammable liquid consisting of a complex mixture of hydrocarbons of various molecular weights and other liquid organic compounds, that are found in geologic formations beneath the Earth's surface. Petroleum is recovered mostly through oil drilling...

. Fuel oil reinjection has increased oil viscosity

Viscosity

Viscosity is a measure of the resistance of a fluid which is being deformed by either shear or tensile stress. In everyday terms , viscosity is "thickness" or "internal friction". Thus, water is "thin", having a lower viscosity, while honey is "thick", having a higher viscosity...

at Kirkuk making it more difficult and expensive to get the oil out of the ground.