KVIG Informative

Iraq wants to more than double its oil production within six years. Its own prime minister is making that pitch weeks after the war next door forced most of the country’s oil fields to shut down entirely.

Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi told a policy conference in Baghdad on Friday that Iraq is targeting production of 8 to 10 million barrels per day within six years, up from roughly 4 million barrels currently. We are working to increase Iraq’s share within the OPEC+ framework, and we aim to reach a production of 9 to 10 million barrels per day in six years, al-Zaidi said. He confirmed he had already dispatched a delegation led by Iraq’s oil and finance ministers to Saudi Arabia to press the case for a higher OPEC quota.

Crude sales generate nearly 90% of Iraq’s government revenue. That dependency is precisely what the Iran war exposed. When Iran effectively closed the Strait of Hormuz earlier this year, Iraq was forced to halt production across most of its oil fields as storage reservoirs filled to capacity with nowhere to send the crude. Before the war, Iraq exported an average of 105 million barrels a month, almost entirely through its Basra terminal and the strait. The country is an OPEC founding member. None of that insulated it from a chokepoint 700 miles away that it does not control.

Exports have only partially recovered. Iraq shipped roughly 49 million barrels in July, with more than 30 million of those passing through Hormuz despite the ongoing disruption. In the first two weeks of August, Iraq averaged 2 million barrels a day in exports, its best stretch since the war began, but still less than half of the pre-war monthly pace.

Al-Zaidi’s plan hinges on routes that bypass Hormuz entirely. Iraq is working to expand exports through Turkey’s Ceyhan port, and is separately pursuing new pipeline access through Syria’s Baniyas port and Jordan’s Aqaba port. A proposed Iraq-Syria pipeline would cost at least $15 billion and take roughly four years to build, according to sources cited by Reuters. The existing Iraq-Turkey pipeline, currently Iraq’s only functioning export line outside the strait, carries just 170,000 barrels a day, a fraction of what Baghdad would need if Hormuz closes again.

The quota Iraq is requesting depends on a technical assessment OPEC+ has not yet finished. The alliance hired the Texas-based consulting firm DeGolyer and MacNaughton to independently evaluate the maximum sustainable production capacity of member states, including Iraq, with findings due to the OPEC Secretariat by late September. Those findings will shape new production baselines starting in 2027, and every OPEC+ member, Iraq included, has an incentive to argue for the highest capacity number it can defend.

Iraq is asking OPEC for permission to produce more oil while still rebuilding the infrastructure to move oil it already has. A higher quota does not fix a chokepoint. Until the Syria pipeline, the Ceyhan expansion, or some other route outside Hormuz actually exists, 10 million barrels a day is a target on paper, sitting behind the same strait that shut Iraq’s fields down once this year already.