Looters and saboteurs running riot in Iraq have trebled the country's oil sector repair bill, slowing efforts to restart exports needed to fund Baghdad's postwar reconstruction.

Gary Loew, director of planning for the US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) Restore Iraq Oil, said rampant pillaging of Iraq's oil network now accounts for more than $800 million of infrastructure repair costs already in excess of $1 billion.

"We're estimating that about three quarters of the damages are due to looting," he said. "So that set us back. But we still have a schedule to get export sales and refining capacity up, and we're not that far off - maybe three weeks to a month."

Iraqi oilfields are now pumping about 800,000 barrels per day (bpd) versus an initial target to reach 1.5 million bpd by the end of June. But Mr Loew hopes Iraqi and US technicians can turn up the taps to hit a mid-July export target of one million bpd.

"If we just had a stable work environment everybody could work quicker," he told Reuters in an interview. "We're still in the situation where we have to send armed escorts out with the work crews."

Iraq's oilfields - which cranked out three million bpd before the war - sustained only minor damage amounting to about $250-$350 million before lawlessness set in, Mr Loew said.

But costs racked up as bandits hauled away tonnes of tools, desks, light sockets and industrial gear.

"There's been this continuing wave of organised criminal activity where they've been going in and taking out compressors, pumps, control units - big pieces of equipment - things that you'd need trucks and cranes to move," he said.

The country's vast southern oilfields, which pumped about two thirds of Iraq's oil before the war, have suffered the most.

Output from the giant southern Rumaila oilfield is fluctuating between 200,000 to 400,000 bpd, while output from northern Kirkuk oilfield is fairly stable at about 500,000 bpd.

Loew said Iraqi and US engineers would hold a major planning session July 6-10 to chart a production, export and rehabilitation strategy to take them through February 2004.

"We'll use that to schedule our work and expenditures so we're doing the most important stuff with the biggest payoff first," he said.

"We're ready to start spending money and executing a lot of construction. If we can just control the looting and sabotage in the future, we should be able to make really good progress."

The US Congress has authorised close to $500 million for repairs but USACE has just given Washington a damage estimate of more than $1 billion.