Iraq has launched a massive programme to repair its export infrastructure to meet its oil demands.
With some of the world's biggest oil reserves, the country is also exporting less than it did before the war.
Although foreign oil companies are streaming into the country, the government recently also had to cut back its estimates for production.
The planned upgrades including that to the dangerously rusted pipeline, the lifeline of the country's economy, is set to more than double exports once completed.
Jeff Ledet, an oil worker for Leighton Offshore said," With the integrity of the pipeline laid in 1977 compared to the technology now, the thickness of the pipe, the concrete coating of the pipe this will outlast [the old pipe] three to one."
Al Jazeera's Jane Arraf reports from Iraqi waters in the Gulf.
