Azernews.Az

By Bloomberg

Iraq’s crude shipments in March rose to the highest level in more than three decades as the government sought to compensate for a drop in exports earlier this year due to bad weather, Oil Ministry spokesman Asim Jihad said.

OPEC’s second-largest producer shipped 92.4 million barrels in March, or 2.98 million barrels a day, Jihad said by phone from Baghdad. Monthly exports gained 15 percent from February, when foul weather at the country’s southern oil terminals limited shipments to 2.59 million barrels a day, according to the Oil Ministry.

“The ministry has made extraordinary efforts to boost crude oil exports to compensate for the delays in loading of tankers due to bad weather,” Jihad said in a statement earlier Wednesday.

Iraq is boosting crude exports amid a global supply glut fed partly by the U.S. shale boom and increased output from Russia. Brent crude, a global pricing benchmark, fell 48 percent last year and was trading at $56.77 a barrel at 12:04 p.m. Thursday Singapore time.

The country with the world’s fifth-biggest oil reserves is rebuilding its energy industry after decades of war, economic sanctions and mismanagement. The government is also burdened by an armed conflict with Islamist militants who seized major cities since last year.

Iraq pumped 3.3 million barrels a day on average last year, the most since 1979, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Among the 12 members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, only Saudi Arabia produces more. Iraq is targeting output of 6 million barrels a day in 2018.

Oil Revenue

The Middle Eastern nation’s shipments in March grew even as the $4.46 billion in oil revenue it generated last month was barely half of the $8.08 billion it earned in May, the peak for monthly sales in 2014. Iraq sold crude at an average price of $48.24 in March.

The government started selling $12 billion in treasury bonds last week to repay oil companies, Muneer Mohammed Omran, director general of the central bank’s investment department, said by phone Wednesday. The drop in oil prices led to a decrease in revenue, affecting payments to the companies, he said. Iraq owes international oil companies $9 billion for 2014, Oil Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi said March 2.

The country shipped 84.08 million barrels last month from the southern Basra region and 8.3 million barrels from the northern oil hub of Kirkuk, Jihad said.

Iraq is installing two new export facilities offshore in the Persian Gulf and is expanding storage capacity to 15 million barrels by the end of this year to overcome bottlenecks curbing output, Deputy Oil Minister Fayyad Al-Nima said in a Feb. 20 interview. Rough weather in the Gulf was halting the the loading of crude on to tankers, he said.