VIENNA -- The model used by the Organization for Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) to regulate the supply and price of crude oil "is dead", Leo Drollas, of the London-based Center for Global Energy Studies (CGES), says.

Here are three questions and answers with the oil analyst. Q: Why has the opec model become obsolete?

A: The OPEC model is dead and there are two reasons for that. Firstly, by controlling output with quotas in order to keep prices high, OPEC constrains the oil demand. Secondly, and this is a perverse consequence, it encourages non-OPEC output. (Notably from Russia, Norway and Mexico). Therefore, OPEC is losing market share. Q: Can OPEC allow Iraq to defect from the organization?

A: Iraq has not been part of the quota process since July 1990. There will be attempts by OPEC to deal with the new government to get Iraq back into the fold early, because Iraq has such big potential. I have a feeling Iraq might leave OPEC or remain without quotas. In order to keep solidarity, OPEC may well treat Iraq as a special case. Because if Iraq leaves OPEC will be mortally wounded. Q: What are your views on the Iraqi oil industry?

A: The Iraqi oil industry needs to start again, have a fresh start with a new model that needs to be applied across the board, to agriculture, and industry, and to trade. It is the price the country will have to pay for democracy.

With 112 billion barrels of oil still sitting untapped in its soil, Iraq is home to 11 percent of the world's oil reserves, London's Center for Global Energy Studies (CGES) estimates.

It has some 2,000 oil wells which pump out about 2.5 million barrels of oil per day from the 15 main oil deposits in the north, south and east of the country.

The actual capacity of the wells is estimated to be higher still at some 2.8 million barrels per day.

Iraq has 12 oil refinaries with a total capacity of 677,000 barrels per day, the biggest being Bassora in the south and Baiji in the north, which can respectively put out 170,000 and 150,000 barrels per day.

Before the 1991 Persian Gulf war, it exported its oil through four pipelines to Turkey, Syria and Saudi Arabia and two ports in the Persian Gulf, of which the one at Min-al-Bakr can accommodate supertankers and ship out up to 1.3 barrels per day.

Most oil experts say however that Iraq's oil infrastructure is ramshackle.

This is due to the damage of the Persian Gulf war, the exodus of the local industry's best technicians and the sanctions the United Nations slapped on Iraq in 1990 for invading Kuwait.

The sanctions have also prevented Iraq from importing the equipment needed to maintain and develop its oil installations.

CGES says it would take about five billion dollars (4.8 billion euros) to update the infrastructure.

It estimates that in order to double the country's oil output by exploiting the virgin fields of Majnoon and West Qurna, in the south, about $20 billion would have to be invested.

The oil fields are in the hands of a state enterprise, Iraq's National Oil Company, which has signed production contracts with Russian, Syrian, Algerian and Chinese companies, as well as France's TotalFinaElf.

But these contracts cannot be honored unless the UN sanctions against Baghdad are lifted.