Iraqi production drops sharply as pipeline outage shuts KRG fields
Oil Minister Hayyan Abdulghani (seventh from left) attends a ceremony at the Majnoon oil field on May 12, 2023, to mark the completion of a water injection project. (ALI AL-AQILY/Iraq Oil Report)
Iraq’s nationwide crude oil production slumped by 320,000 barrels per day (bpd) in April compared with the previous month, pushed down by a dramatic fall in output from the semi-autonomous Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), where fields were shut down due to the continued closure of the northern export pipeline through Turkey.
Iraq Oil Report calculates national production by gathering data monthly from the country’s producing fields. Federal and KRG production in April combined for an average of 4.30 million bpd, down from 4.63 million bpd in March.*
Almost all of the decline came from fields in Iraqi Kurdistan, which have either shut down entirely or throttled back in response to the pipeline outage. KRG production had been averaging over 430,000 bpd over the past year, but it fell below 415,000 bpd in March and down to about 117,000 bpd in April, with output going to domestic refineries.
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