Iraq’s Oil Output Overtakes Iran’s
LONDON — Iraq has overtaken Iran as the second-largest OPEC oil producer for the first time since the late 1980s, a symbolic shift that signals the huge impact of Western sanctions on Tehran and the steady recovery of Baghdad’s energy industry.
The International Energy Agency, the Western countries’ oil watchdog, said Friday that Iraq last month produced more than 3 million barrels a day, the highest output since the U.S.-led invasion nearly a decade ago. At the same time, Iranian oil output fell below the 3 million-barrel-a-day level for the first time in more than 20 years, dropping to 2.9 million a day in July.
Last month was the first that saw the combined impact of U.S. sanctions against Tehran, a full E.U. embargo on the country’s crude exports and a de facto global ban on maritime insurance for Iranian oil supertankers. “The different [production] paths show the huge impact of politics in oil and the Middle East,” Manouchehr Takin, an oil analyst at the Center for Global Energy Studies, said.
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