U.S. sanctions on Iran’s oil industry were bound to be good news for fellow OPEC producers in the Middle East even if it wouldn’t have been good manners to acknowledge it openly. Yet Saudi Arabia and Iraq were quick to assure market players that they were ready to step in and replace lost Iranian supply. While Saudi Arabia has been wary of reversing its production cuts, however, Iraq has wasted no time in raising its crude oil exports. IHS Markit reports that Iraq shipped an average 1.045 million bpd of crude to India over the first five months of the year and another 870,000 bpd to China—the two biggest buyers of Iranian crude that were kind of left hanging after the sanction waiver that Washington had granted them and another six importers of Iranian crude expired. Europe was also a large buyer of Iraqi crude, taking in an average […]