Daura Refinery

The Daura refinery was built in 1953 and began operations in 1955. It is located 20 kilometers southwest of Baghdad. Operated by Iraq's Midland Refineries Company (MRC), the Daura refinery is Iraq's second-largest.

The refinery itself and pipelines supplying it with crude oil were attacked numerous times by insurgents between 2003 and 2008.

=Capacity=

Daura's refining capacity has undergone major fluctuations. It was expanded in 1996 to nearly 130,000 barrels per day (bpd), but its capacity had fallen to 110,000 bpd by 2005. A leaked US diplomatic cable from January 2009 claimed a "design capacity" of 90,000 bpd, but noted that the refinery regularly operated at 50 percent capacity due to inadequate supplies of crude oil, as the Strategic Pipeline was unable to fuel all of the users along its route.

Between 2009 and 2011, the refinery's capacity was raised to 210,000 bpd following the construction of new units, and remained at this level as of mid-2011. In late 2012 Deputy Oil Minister Ahmad al-Shamaa announced that expansion of the Daura refinery would be a component of plans to increase overall refining capacity by 23 percent by 2013.

=References=