ERBIL, Kurdistan Region of Iraq – Iraq pocketed nearly $7 billion in oil revenues for the month of September, with exports amounting to over 102 million barrels, the oil ministry said on Sunday, a reduction in profits from the previous month. 

“According to the final statistics issued by the Iraqi State Organization for Marketing of Oil (SOMO), the quantity of crude oil exports, including condensates, reached [102,150,362] barrels” in September, the ministry said in a statement. 

It added that oil revenues for September exceeded $6,962,124,000 but fell short of the revenues for August by $198 million. 

The figures account for oilfields in central and southern Iraq and exclude the Kurdistan Region, according to the ministry. 

Iraq’s current production capacity sits at around 4 million barrels per day, according to an agreement with OPEC+, of which nearly 700,000 barrels are used domestically. 

Meanwhile, the Kurdistan Region has been exporting around 185,000 barrels of oil per day through the Iraq-Turkey pipeline following its resumption after a breakthrough was reached between Erbil, Baghdad, and international oil companies.

Oil exports from the Kurdistan Region resumed in September via Turkey’s Cehyan port, ending an 18-month halt that cost Iraq an estimated $30 billion in lost revenue. 

The Kurdistan Region’s oil exports through Turkey’s Ceyhan port had been halted since March 2023, when a Paris-based arbitration court ruled that Ankara had breached a 1973 pipeline agreement by allowing Erbil to start selling oil independently in 2014, awarding the case to Baghdad. 

Oil sales provide more than 90 percent of Iraq’s revenue, and the state’s economy and spendings are highly dependent on its oil sector.