Iraq’s spokesman calls 2 million barrels a day normal, three weeks after Baghdad struggled to pay July salaries

The National reported on 4 August that Iraq was struggling to make July salary payments because oil revenue failed to cover the budget. Against that, al-Aboudi told his press conference that exports were running normally at more than 2 million barrels per day and that the cabinet is expected to vote on the 2027 budget in September. The export architecture has shifted decisively northward this year. The Kirkuk–Ceyhan line, halted since March 2023 after an ICC ruling ordering Turkey to pay Iraq $1.5bn over unauthorised Kurdish exports, restarted on 27 September 2025 at 180,000–190,000 bpd. By 6 April 2026 Basra crude was moving through the Kurdistan pipeline network to Ceyhan for the first time, lifting that route to 330,000 bpd, and to 340,000 bpd two days later. On 2 June, Bloomberg reported Iraq was moving to boost Ceyhan exports with the Strait of Hormuz shut.

The power sector shows the same arithmetic. On 18 March the Ministry of Electricity said Iranian gas supplies had ceased entirely after strikes on facilities linked to South Pars at Assaluyeh, removing more than 3.1 GW from the grid; a ministry spokesperson said flows fell from 19 million cubic metres a day to zero. Three days later spokesman Ahmed Moussa told state media that flows had resumed “at a rate of five million cubic meters” a day, against pre-war contracted volumes of roughly 50 mcm/d in summer. The Washington-based platform Attaqa put early-2026 production near 29 GW against baseline demand near 40 GW. Mohamed al-Hasani, an economic expert, told Shafaq News on 7 May: “The country faces a clear gap in supplies. There are no ready alternatives capable of filling the current fuel shortage.”

Assessment: Interrogate the 2 million figure rather than repeat it. Iraq’s run-rate has historically sat well above that, so a spokesman presenting it as normal is either redefining the baseline or conceding a shortfall without saying so — and the July salary story indicates which. The structural point is that if Hormuz has been closed, Ceyhan stops being a Kurdish-autonomy file and becomes the state’s export artery, which inverts the leverage in every Baghdad–Erbil dispute, including the Peshmerga funding question due at withdrawal. Note also that the gas waiver survives while the electricity waiver was ended in April: Washington has kept the lever that keeps Iraqi lights on.