Export pipeline outages in Iraq and Nigeria outweighed further production increases in Iran in February as Opec production fell to a nine month low. Output fell by 360,000 b/d from January’s revised record of 32.81mn b/d to 32.45mn b/d. The biggest fall was in Iraq, where output dropped by 200,000 b/d, mainly due to a 13 day outage of the export pipeline from the autonomous Kurdistan Region to Turkey (MEES, 11 March).

Other than Iran, which is gradually increasing production in the post-sanctions era, the only Opec country to register an increase was Angola, where output rose by 10,000 b/d. (CONTINUED - 1107 WORDS)