By Joe Wallace
In the early hours of Wednesday in Istanbul, Bijan Mossavar-Rahmani called his team in Iraqi Kurdistan to tell them to get back to work. Shortly after dawn, the workers were out in the company's oil fields, readying them to start pumping crude again.
Mossavar-Rahmani is chairman of DNO, a Norwegian oil producer with fields in the semi-autonomous Kurdish region of northern Iraq. DNO was the first oil producer in the Middle East to stop producing after the U.S.-Israeli attack on Iran. It's on track to be the first to restart pumping.
DNO first needs to sort out sales logistics with Iraq's national oil marketing company. Mossavar-Rahmani hopes to be pumping within days.
Before then, workers are preparing existing wells and drilling new ones, so DNO can pump as much as possible if the cease-fire holds. The company has put up concrete walls to try to protect them. A drone struck DNO's fields last year.
Even if the cease-fire breaks, "at these onshore fields, you can do a lot in a short period of time," Mossavar-Rahmani said, describing them as a Ferrari you drive with one foot on the accelerator and one on the brake. Despite the selloff in energy markets on Wednesday, prices are still so high that even 10 days of sales could be lucrative.
The company pumps up to 85,000 barrels of crude a day. DNO sells some locally. The rest flows out to the Mediterranean via a pipeline through Turkey. Pressure that built up while the field was offline could propel more oil out of the wells than normal. It would still be a trickle compared with all the oil stuck behind the Strait of Hormuz.
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(END) Dow Jones Newswires
April 08, 2026 10:45 ET (14:45 GMT)
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