Iraq Oil Minister Luaibi Oil minister Jabar al-Luaibi has called upon oil and natural gas companies operating in Iraq to increase their production for the rest of 2016 and 2017, according to a statement by Iraq’s oil ministry, quoted by Reuters. The minister’s comments came just a week after OPEC decided to work toward a deal to limit output to a band of between 32.5 million barrels per day and 33 million bpd. Market cheer and euphoric oil price hikes lasted for a few days after OPEC’s deal-to-reach-a-deal, but the market and analysts were quick to realize that a specific agreement is anything but a done deal. A day after OPEC producers agreed on September 28 to limit production, it was Iraq that questioned OPEC’s methods of calculating production estimates for each member state. The organization relies on two sets of data for these estimates: production figures supplied by […]