Western oil giants look to ramp up Iraqi crude output as global economy sputters

Chevron, ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil, BP, TotalEnergies and other Western oil majors have already signed or are looking to ink new contracts with Baghdad that would increase Iraq’s crude output from ~3.5M bpd to 5.5M bpd by 2030.

Prime Minister al-Zaidi suggests output could even hit 8-10M bpd after 2035, which would put Iraq roughly on a par with Saudi Arabia and Russia, and mean its potential entry into the world’s top three oil exporters.

OPEC’s current production quota for Iraq is ~4.4M bpd, and there are other potential issues, like how to ship the new oil out of the country, given blockades in Hormuz and Bab al-Mandab, and overland pipeline plans via neighboring Turkey and Syria  that are nowhere close to filling even existing output capacity.