Tuesday, September 6, 2016

Rising Prices Lead To Highest Oil Revenue of 2016 For Iraq


Iraq’s oil exports have been on a steady pace for most of the year, but a slight increase in prices led to the highest monthly revenue for the country in August 2016.

In August Iraq maintained its pace for exports. It averaged 3.23 million barrels a day, which kept pace for the rest of the year where it has averaged 3.244 million barrels a month. In April Iraq reached 3.363 million barrels tying it for the highest level since 2003. It has not been able to meet that mark again, because the Oil Ministry has diverted some of its production to power plants to produce electricity during the summer heat wave and to refineries. If not it could have been doing 3.3 million in recent months.

What changed in August was that prices saw a slight increase, that led to higher revenues. A barrel of Iraqi crude sold for $39.24 up from $38.28 in July. That was the second highest price of the year and led to $3.93 billion, which was the most Iraq earned since making $4.908 billion in July. Despite that rise in profits Baghdad is still not making the $4 billion a month it needs just to cover salaries and pensions. There is hope that mark could be met in the rest of the year however. The central and Kurdish regional government have just reached a new temporary agreement to export oil through Kurdistan’s pipeline to Turkey. Each side will sell an average of 150,000 barrels a day to the pipeline from the Kirkuk fields. With both Baghdad and Irbil running huge deficits any increase in revenues will help.
 
Iraq Oil Exports & Revenues 2015-16
Month
Avg.
Exports
Avg. Price
Per Barrel
Earnings
(Bil)
Jan
2.535
$41.45
$3.258
Feb
2.597
$47.43
$3.449
Mar
2.980
$48.24
$4.457
Apr
3.077
$51.70
$4.8
May
3.145
$55.87
$5.447
Jun
3.187
$55.32
$5.289
Jul
3.104
$50.99
$4.908
Aug
3.079
$40.59
$3.925
Sep
3.052
$40.32
$3.725
Oct
2.703
$39.56
$3.29
Nov
3.363
$36.42
$3.66
Dec
3.215
$29.84
$2.92
2015 Avg.
3.003
$44.81
$4.094
Jan
3.285
$22.21
$2.262
Feb
3.224
$23
$2.249
Mar
3.287
$28.40
$2.894
Apr
3.363
$33.38
$3.368





May
3.200
$37.78
$3.748
Jun
3.176
$40.36
$3.845
Jul
3.202
$38.28
$3.802
Aug
3.23
$39.24
$3.93
2016 Avg.
3.244
$32.83
$3.26

SOURCES

eKurd, “Iraqi Kurdistan News in brief – August 30, 2016,” 8/30/16

Lando, Ben, “Oil exports and revenue are back up,” Iraq Oil Report, 9/1/16

Platts, “Iraq’s August crude oil exports inch up to 3.230 million b/d,” 9/1/16

Tahir, Rawaz, Van Heuvelen, Ben, and Lando, Ben, “Baghdad-Erbil export deal moves forward,” Iraq Oil Report, 9/2/16

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