19/06/2012
Official data published by the lead of shared data showed that Saudi exports of crude oil fell to 583.7 million barrels per day in April, down 121 thousand barrels per day from March despite higher production to 102.1 million barrels per day.
According to the data the production of Saudi Arabia increased 179 thousand barrels per day in April to its level in March, but exports fell due to increased domestic demand for oil and building stocks.
In a related context,Thamer Ghadban, senior adviser to Iraqi Prime Minister in the field of energy said yesterday that Iraq has two years at least before reaching the level of production calls for discussions within the "OPEC" over quota production to Baghdad.
Iraq relieved from a system of quotas production in "OPEC" for years because of war and sanctions.Ghadban said that the last production quota allocated to Iraq was in June 1990 when the size of the production target of both Iran and Iraq was 14.3 million barrels per day.
A plan to expand oil production to three million barrels was adopted by Baghdad. The last time Iraq had reached this level was before the invasion of Kuwait in 1990 and slightly less for the production of Iran, which fell to its lowest level in 20 years because of Western sanctions.
Ghadban said that Iraq's production capacity will reach 4.3 million barrels per day by the end of this year, and expected to reach 5.4 million barrels per day by 2014.
He added that Iraq was considering reducing the target level to increase production capacity to about 9.3 million barrels a day from the target level of 12 million barrels per day, which some people in the field of energy see that it,s an exaggerated ambition.
Even in that case Iraq will come dsecond in rank in "OPEC" after Saudi Arabia, which production capacity of up to 12.5 million barrels per day.
