Iraq’s upstream shows signs of life

Baghdad is once again looking towards much higher long-term capacity goals

Iraq’s oil production hit a ten-month peak of 3.9mn bl/d in March, as the Opec+ cuts with which the country has, admittedly reluctantly, largely complied with began to ease. And federal export revenues were their highest for a year, ever since the brief Saudi-Russia oil price war was followed by Covid-19. With more production curbs set to lift and the prospect of further revenue growth, Iraq’s oil minister Ihsan Ismaael looked to the future in late March. The country’s new goal is to hike nationwide capacity—including that controlled by the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) in the semi-autonomous north—by some two-thirds, to 8m bl/d, by 2029. 8mn bl/d – Baghdad’s 2029 output goal W