ECONOMY
The sun sets as flare stacks burn off excess gas at the Mushrif site inside the Zubair oil and gas field, north of the southern Iraqi province of Basra, on July 13, 2022. Photo: Hussein Faleh/AFP
ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Iraq in May brought in over $7.3 billion from oil sales, the oil ministry reported on Thursday, bringing total oil revenue for the first five months of the year to around $37 billion.
In its preliminary monthly report, the Iraqi oil ministry announced that more than 102 million barrels of crude oil were exported in May, at an average rate of 3.3 million barrels per day and an average price of $71.3 per barrel.
A total of $7.306 billion was generated from oil sales according to the early numbers, down from April's $7.7 billion. Though Iraq exported nearly four million barrels more in May than April, the drop in revenue was because of a nearly seven dollars per barrel decline in price.
In compliance with the OPEC+ production cuts, Iraq announced in April that it was cutting oil production by 211,000 barrels per day starting from May and effective until the end of 2023.
Last month's oil revenue is Iraq's second lowest since the start of the year after February's $7.08 billion.
The International Monetary Fund on Wednesday said that growth momentum in Iraq's economy has slowed down in recent months, largely affected by the oil production cuts and the halt in exporting Kurdistan Region's oil.
The Kurdistan Region's oil exports through Turkey's Ceyhan port are yet to resume after being put on hold in late March following a ruling from a Paris-based arbitration court saying that Ankara had breached its 1973 pipeline agreement with Baghdad.
Iraq's draft 2023 budget with a record $152 billion in spending has sparked concerns of instability should oil prices drop below the $70 per barrel threshold set in the budget.
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