Rising oil sales fuel hopes of funding new 2021 budget targets
The increased revenue is a welcome development for the Iraqi government, which has suffered from a dire financial crisis, and which just passed a 2021 budget law that authorizes 129.99 trillion Iraqi dinars ($89.65 billion) in expenditures. To fully fund that spending with oil sales, given the export levels projected in the budget, oil prices would need to stay well above $60 per barrel for the year.
The federal government earned $5.783 billion from oil sales of 2.946 million bpd, according to the Oil Ministry, while the semi-autonomous Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) averaged 421,000 bpd of exports worth about $704 million, according to an Iraq Oil Report analysis based on export and pricing data. **
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