TEHRAN -- An Iranian MP warned here Sunday of output disruptions in OPEC since U.S. would definitely take on the world's major oil producers to pump the Iraqi oil following military gains of the coalition forces in that country.

"Given the changes which Americans will make in the Iraqi quota in the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, they will subject the organization to some upheavals," Jassem Shadidzadeh, a member of the Majlis Energy Commission, told IRNA.

This was reflected in U.S.-led forces turning a blind eye to the ongoing looting in Iraq, but keeping Iraqi oil installations safe from the looters, he said.

"In the course of Americans' military intervention, only the Iraqi Oil Ministry has remained immune from the public looting.

"This indicates the importance they (Americans) attach to investment and operation in the Iraqi oil sector," Shadidzadeh added.

According to the MP, the U.S. will return to Iraq part of the output quota taken from that country and granted to Saudi Arabia after the first Persian Gulf War in 1991.

"Most of the economic analysts believe that America will raise the Iraqi oil (production) in order to undermine the role of Iran and Saudi Arabia in OPEC," Shadidzadeh said. The two countries are the second and first biggest oil producers respectively in OPEC.

According to the MP, a team of the U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney's former energy firm, Halliburton Co., had already arrived in southern Iraq to study the exploitation of several oil fields.

Shadidzadeh also said that Iran must not ignore its economic prospects in Iraq following the ouster of Saddam Hussein who imposed a destructive war on the Islamic Republic between 1980 and 1988.

"It is unwise to overlook a neighbor with which we have more than 1,200 km of common land and sea borders," he said.

The parliamentarian called for the completion of a railroad linking the Iranian port city of Khorramshahr to Basra in southern Iraq, which he said only needs 18km of rail to be built.

"This railroad can connect Iran to the Mediterranean Sea via the Syrian port city of Al Ladhiqiyah (Latakia), thus creating a transit rout between Central Asia and Europe which could turn Khorramshahr into the 'bride of ports' in the Middle East again," he said.

Khorramshahr was razed during the Iraqi invasion of the city in the early days of the conflict and regular artillery shelling of the city after its recapture.

Shadidzadeh also highlighted Iran's strategic position in the region, calling on the country to make the best from much-expected differences between the U.S. vis-a-vis the European Union, Russia and China over the reconstruction of Iraq, and participate in that country's rehabilitation.