Iraq is the biggest threat to the OPEC deal

REUTERS/Essam Al-Sudani

OPEC made an early New Year’s resolution when it promised the world that it will get thin – or more accurately that it will thin its output in an effort to help support prices. As anyone who has ever had a New Year’s resolution knows, those promises can be hard to keep. OPEC is about to find that out.

The issue of challenging production cuts starts with OPEC’s second biggest producer – Iraq. Iraq has agreed to cut 210,000 barrels per day from its production levels. That sounds simple in theory – just switch off a few pumps. In reality it’s much more difficult than that.

In particular, Iraq faces a thorny issue because it has contractual commitments that it has made with international oil companies which operate its massive southern oil fields. Those companies are not just going to go along with an edict issued by the Iraqi government – they have contracts to fulfill and they are going to try and maximize their own profits according to those contracts. Thus unlike Saudi Arabia, Iraq is not really in control of its own production.

Adding a further complication for Iraq is the fact that it has only tenuous control over the northern portion of the country which is controlled by its Kurdish minority. The Kurds may or may not be willing to go along with the production cuts agreed to be the national government. In some senses, a second agreement between the Iraqi government and the Kurds is needed to decide who will bear the brunt of the cuts. The Kurds would prefer that the Southern oil fields absorb all of the cuts while the national government prefers the opposite.

Iraq’s overall production has grown substantially in the last five years as a degree of normalcy has started to return to the country. Following the Iraq war, the government brought in a myriad array of third party contractors – including U.S. firms – to work the oil fields.

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