Oil in Global Economy Series: Latest tanker data shows Kurdistan behind OPEC’s production drop in October

According to a survey conducted by Reuters, the OPEC production declined by 80,000 barrels per day in October after a rise in production by 88,000 barrels per day in September. The decline comes despite a production increase in the tune of 70,000 barrels per day in Libya and majority of the contribution comes from Iraq, where according to Reuters, production declined by 120,000 barrels per day in October.

An excellent work done by Tanker trackers, which tracked oil shipped from Turkey’s Ceyhan port, which exclusively used to transfer Kurdish oil to global markets declined in the month of October to 0.345 million barrels per day, down from the usual 0.55 million barrels per day. The data suggest that production has actually gone up in Iraq excluding Kurdistan. Reuters data shows Iraq exports down by 0.12 million barrels per day, while data from Tanker trackers show that drop in Kurdish oil supplies was 0.205 million barrels per day. And that means that in rest of Iraq, production has gone up by 85,000 barrels per day.

It was Kurdistan, which contributed to the decline in OPEC’s production in October. In absence of which, the production would have gone up by 0.12 million barrels per day.