Iraq is reeling from fuel shortages that have seen lengthening queues at the pumps since last week. This comes despite Opec’s second largest producer notching up 15-year high refinery output of 849,000 b/d for February. But Iraq’s aging refinery fleet struggles to produce sizeable quantities of high value products. Just 61,000 b/d of gasoline and 139,000 b/d of diesel were produced. In contrast February’s near-record output included a whopping 374,000 b/d of low-quality fuel oil, some 44% of total output, whilst February’s record 151,000 b/d of ‘naphtha’ output – well over twice the gasoline figure – indicates that the vast bulk of ‘gasoline pool’ production is of too low quality to be used as road fuel (see chart 1).