Iraq Continues Record Oil Production Despite Iran’s Reentry

January 21, 2016 Share Print 0

Iraq’s plan to increase oil output this year will go ahead, with exports running in January at a record level and unaffected by Iran’s return to the market, Iraqi Oil Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi told Reuters on Thursday.

Iraq, OPEC’s second-largest producer, expects output from the country’s southern region to increase by up to 400,000 barrels per day (bpd) this year to over 4 million bpd, he said during an interview in Baghdad.

Iraq also produces oil from the north but revenues from those sales go to the Kurdish self-ruled region, not the central government in Baghdad. The north produces more than 600,000 bpd.

Iraq will be offering competitive prices to market its additional crude output, the minister said, adding that it had made contracts with Chinese refineries covering all of 2016.

“In fact, we in Iraq are not short of contracts,” he said. “Until now, the demand on our oil is more than our offer, even with the return of Iran.”

via Reuters

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Alfonso Esparza

Senior Currency Analyst at Market Pulse

Alfonso Esparza specializes in macro forex strategies for North American and major currency pairs. Upon joining OANDA in 2007, Alfonso Esparza established the MarketPulseFX blog and he has since written extensively about central banks and global economic and political trends. Alfonso has also worked as a professional currency trader focused on North America and emerging markets. He has been published by The MarketWatch, Reuters, the Wall Street Journal and The Globe and Mail, and he also appears regularly as a guest commentator on networks including Bloomberg and BNN. He holds a finance degree from the Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education (ITESM) and an MBA with a specialization on financial engineering and marketing from the University of Toronto.