Iraq After World War II In the 1970s With the end of World War II, IPC and its affiliates undertook the repair and development of facilities in Iraq as funding and materials became available. There has been pressure on exploration and drilling, particularly in the Basra and Mosul areas, to meet the terms of the concession. Although considered a priority, the elimination of transportation constraints was delayed when a second, nearly completed, larger pipeline to Haifa was abandoned in 1948 following the First Arab-Israeli War. Use of the existing Haifa line was also discontinued. In 1951, however, commercial exports by BPC of good quality crude oil began through a new pipeline at Al Faw on the Persian Gulf. Exports were further increased with the completion in 1952 of a thirty-inch oil pipeline linking the Kirkuk oil fields to the Syrian port of Baniyas, which had a transport capacity of 13 million tons per year. In that year, production from Basra and Mosul approached 2.5 million tonnes while the Kirkuk fields increased production to over 15 million tonnes. Within one year (1951-52), Iraq's total oil production had doubled to nearly 20 million tons. Iraqi officials still harbored ambitions, dating back to the 1920 San Remo Conference, to take control of their nation's oil resources. The elimination of transportation bottlenecks and the resulting rapid growth in exports have encouraged Iraqi assertiveness. The IPC's costly and sunk investments in Iraq's oil infrastructure gave the government even greater power. A particularly sore point among Iraqis concerned the IPC's contractual obligation to meet Iraq's domestic needs for gasoline and other petroleum products. A subsidiary of IPC operated a small refinery and distributed...... half the paper......o and was responsible for oil refining, gas processing and domestic marketing of gas products through several organizations subsidiaries. INOC would be responsible for the production, transportation and sale of crude oil and gas. Some of its operations were contracted out to foreign service companies. The State Northern Petroleum Organization (SONO), subordinate to INOC, replaced ICOO as the operating company in the northern fields. In subsequent reorganizations, SONO was renamed the Northern Petroleum Organization (NPO), and a Central Petroleum Organization (CPO) and a Southern Petroleum Organization (SPO) were also established. The State Organization for Petroleum Projects (SOOP) took over responsibility for infrastructure from INOC, and the State Petroleum Marketing Organization (SOMO) took over responsibility for oil sales, leaving INOC free to oversee oil production..