On the face of it, Iraq’s beleaguered oil industry has braved the worst of the oil-price collapse. Federal production figures showed output to be 4.228m barrels a day in September, while Kurdish Iraq produced 0.546m b/d, giving a total of 4.774m b/d. Those figures are disputed – Opec’s own secondary sources put output about 320,000 b/d lower, at 4.455m b/d – hardly a small anomaly and far from indicative of the cooperation Opec needs if it is to implement its much-discussed cuts. If those cuts do emerge in 2017, Iraq will accept a reduction from the upper base-line – it simply doesn’t accept Opec’s lower number.
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