Workers of South Oil Company (SOC) adjust a valve at the Rumaila oil field in Basra Province (file). Iraq’s southern oil exports, representing the central government’s shipments, rose to 3.064mn bpd in July and will remain at about the same level for the rest of the month, a spokesman of the state-owned SOC said by phone yesterday.

Bloomberg
Baghdad


Iraq’s oil exports from the south climbed to a record this month at the same time the self-ruled Kurds in the north are shipping crude independently, adding to a global supply glut as producers vie for market share.
Southern oil exports, representing the central government’s shipments, rose to 3.064mn bpd in July and will remain at about the same level for the rest of the month, Thaer Yassin, spokesman of the state-owned South Oil Co, said by phone yesterday. Exports were 3.020mn bpd in June, he said.
“We are increasing exports every month,” Yassin said. “The figure is a record.”
Iraq, the second-largest Opec member, is boosting shipments as a global glut driven by a US shale boom prompts producers to pursue strategies to defend market share. Brent oil has fallen about 50% from last year’s high in June as the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries refrained from cutting output amid the highest level of American supply in more than three decades.
The semi-autonomous Kurdistan Regional Government started to bypass the central government for all crude oil exports in June for the first time amid a dispute over revenue sharing, KRG spokesman Safeen Dizayee said in a July 13 interview. Oil producers in the Kurdish region, including DNO and Genel Energy, are caught in the dispute between the Iraqi central government and the Kurds, and are struggling to extract payments for their oil shipments.
The KRG region is exporting 600,000 bpd from the Kurdish region and the neighbouring Kirkuk area independently from the central government’s oil marketing company, Ali Hussein Balou, an adviser to KRG natural resources minister Ashti Hawrami, said in a phone interview yesterday. The KRG will continue to export crude independently until a deal is reached with the central government, he said.
Iraq’s minority Kurds, who historically have resisted control by governments in Baghdad, are independently developing oil reserves they say may total 45bn barrels, equivalent to almost a third of Iraq’s deposits, according to BP data. The Kurds operate a separate military force, which last year occupied the long-disputed, oil-rich territory around Kirkuk as the Iraqi army fled from Islamic State militants.


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