Iraq's Rumaila South oilfield output has been restored to 460,000 barrels per day after pipeline bombings last week and normal production of about 650,000 bpd is expected to start today.

"Two production stations were restarted yesterday morning to pump 460,000 bpd to Zubair storage and two more stations were operating in the afternoon," said Salah Abdul Kareem, the head of Rumaila operations on Sunday.

He said output from Rumaila South is expected to increase gradually to hit around 650,000 bpd today. Rumaila North has a normal production of around 540,000 bpd.

Exports from Basra were at around two million barrels yesterday compared with 1.58m barrels on Saturday, a shipping source said.

Oil production at Iraq's Rumaila oilfield had been cut by 700,000 bpd from about 1.24m bpd after two bombs on Friday halted some of its production.

Rumaila has estimated reserves of around 17 billion barrels and produces the bulk of Iraq's total output of 2.9m bpd now.-Reuters