By: OrePulse

Iraq's Ministry of Oil said this week that the country's crude oil exports averaged approximately 2.6 million barrels per day in September, pushing back against media reports that daily shipments had climbed to as much as four million barrels per day.

In a statement issued Monday, September 21, 2026, the ministry said the four-million-barrel figure reflected a single unusually busy day of loadings rather than a new, sustained export pace. Officials said the number arose because several separate tanker loading operations fell on the same day, temporarily inflating that day's total.

According to the ministry, the spike coincided with an offshore loading by the State Organization for Marketing of Oil (SOMO) of Qayyarah heavy crude, carried out outside the Strait of Hormuz. That loading occurred alongside a cluster of already scheduled vessel departures from Iraq's southern export terminals, along with shipments from northern outlets grouped into tanker-sized parcels for sale.

The ministry said swings of this kind are a normal feature of tanker scheduling. Vessel arrival windows, known as laycans, and the practice of combining smaller volumes into full cargo lots can cause daily export figures to move sharply from one day to the next without changing the underlying monthly trend, officials said.

The ministry framed the steadier 2.6-million-bpd average as a significant accomplishment given current geopolitical and logistical pressures, chief among them the ongoing closure of the Strait of Hormuz. Sustaining that pace through late September despite the disruption to the key regional shipping route, officials said, reflected the resilience of Iraq's export operations.

Officials added that energy and logistics teams are working to keep crude flowing through alternative channels, aiming to maximize oil sales and preserve foreign currency revenue for the state treasury amid tight liquidity.

The clarification appeared aimed at preventing the four-million-bpd figure from being read as evidence of a durable jump in Iraq's export capacity. The ministry instead presented the 2.6-million-bpd average as the more accurate measure of the country's current output, a level it said has held steady even as regional shipping disruptions continue.