OREANDA-NEWS. Iraqi production will show a more than 200,000 b/d drop by the end of this month, in line with the country's commitment under the Opec output agreement.

So far production has been reduced by 170,000-200,000 b/d, and this has been reflected in a fall in exports from Iraq's southern terminals by 200,000 b/d, director general of state-owned marketer Somo Falah al-Amri said today. Iraq agreed to cut production by an average 210,000 b/d in the first half of 2017 from a baseline of 4.56mn b/d — Iraq's October 2016 output as assessed by Opec secondary sources, including Argus.

Iraq has tried to curb domestic oil consumption in order to comply with the Opec commitment. State-owned SOC has asked international oil firms to reduce production in the fields at which they operate, al-Amri said. This is an ostensible turnaround from an earlier plan to mostly curb production from state-owned fields to avoid paying compensation to foreign operators. Earlier this week al-Amri said Iraq has already reduced production at SOC's fields.

Al-Amri said January and February export loading programmes — set at a 15-month and 16-month highs respectively — would not result in actual exports being higher, because "usually Somo allocates more than it intends to sell." He said the over-allocation was to deal with weather conditions and the variability of the loading rate at its single-point moorings (SPM). He said Somo tries to use a procedure of having a tanker on stand-by to achieve this. Somo's actual exports are on occasion higher than the preliminary loading programme.