Iraq has increased oil exports following the gradual unwinding of voluntary production cuts under an OPEC+ agreement, the country’s state oil marketer SOMO said on Sunday.
Earlier this month, eight members of OPEC+ agreed to raise production from October by 137,000 barrels per day. OPEC+ has been increasing production since April after years of cuts to support the oil market.
The increase in Iraqi exports is expected to generate hundreds of millions of dollars in additional revenues at current price levels, SOMO’s director general Ali Nizar Al-Shatari told the Iraqi state news agency.
He did not specify the size of the export rise, but said that an additional 200,000 barrels per day of production would boost government coffers.
Iraq’s oil exports averaged 3.38 million barrels per day in August, according to the oil ministry. SOMO expects September’s average exports to range from 3.4 million to 3.45 million bpd.
Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani said earlier this month that he hoped fellow producers would reconsider its oil export quota to better reflect its production capacity.
Iraq, OPEC’s biggest overproducer, is under pressure from the group to cut output to compensate for pumping above its agreed quota. Iraq was among countries that submitted plans in April to make further oil output cuts to compensate for pumping above agreed quotas.
(Reporting by Ahmed Tolba and Hatem Maher Editing by Ros Russell and Hugh Lawson)