Citing a draft U.S. government report it gained access to, the newspaper said the amounts relate to between 100,000 and 300,000 barrels a day of Iraq"s declared oil production over the past four years.

  The report does not give a final conclusion on what happened to the missing fraction of the roughly two million barrels pumped by Iraq each day, the paper said.

  But the findings are sure to reinforce longstanding suspicions that smugglers, insurgents and corrupt officials control significant parts of the country"s oil industry, The Times said.

Just the facts

The report also covered alternative explanations for the billions of dollars worth of discrepancies, including the possibility that Iraq has been consistently overstating its oil production.

 Iraq and the U.S. State Department have been under relentless pressure to show tangible progress in Iraq by raising production levels, which have languished well below the U.S. goal of three million barrels a day, according to the report.

PIN/Turkishdailynews.Com