Oil ministry claims pre-war export levels as domestic debt climbs a quarter in eight months

Oil Minister Basim Mohammed Khudair al-Abadi told the Iraqi News Agency on Monday 19 October that exports since the start of October had averaged “more than 3.4 million barrels per day,” up from what he put at 3 million bpd in September, and framed the figure as a return to pre-war levels of 3.3–3.5m bpd. Every subsequent report traces to that single INA interview; AGBI wrote that the minister “has claimed” the recovery, and no tanker-tracking firm, SOMO statement or OPEC secondary-source figure has been matched against it. The ministry’s own September baseline is disputed: Oilprice reports 2.65m bpd “according to the oil ministry,” which would make October a jump of some 750,000 bpd rather than 400,000. Oilprice puts 250,000 bpd of the October total through the Iraq–Turkey pipeline to Ceyhan. Iraqi output ran 4.09m bpd in January and 4.14m in February before collapsing to 1.90m in March and 1.63m in April.

Two Shafaq News releases on 21 October, drawn from published official data, point the other way. Citing the Central Bank of Iraq, domestic public debt reached 113.485 trillion dinars ($74.66bn) at end-August, up 25.4 percent from the 90.515tn ($59.55bn) recorded at end-2025, and up 3.969tn ($2.61bn) in August alone — composed of 18.945tn in loans, 9.330tn in bonds and 8.711tn in treasury bills. Citing the finance ministry, revenues through end-August were 45.355tn dinars ($29.84bn), with oil at roughly 77 percent of state revenue, against expenditure of 75.787tn ($49.86bn): a deficit of 30.432tn dinars, or $20.02bn. Shafaq’s own headline rendered that as “$30B,” a mis-conversion of the dinar figure; the body of its report is the number to use. The same table shows debt servicing of 7.561tn dinars ($4.97bn) over eight months.

The IMF’s October World Economic Outlook, reported by Shafaq on 13 October, forecasts the Iraqi economy contracting 16 percent in 2026 before rebounding 19 percent in 2027, against minus 0.4 percent in 2025. Regional oil exporters as a group are put at minus 3.8 percent this year and plus 7.4 percent next. Inflation is seen at 3.5 percent in 2026 from 0.3 percent in 2025, and the current-account deficit widening to 10.8 percent of GDP from 3.8 percent before flipping to a 2.2 percent surplus in 2027. Separately, Shafaq reported on 19 October that Iraq was absent from the US Treasury’s major foreign holders list for August, released 16 October, with total foreign holdings at $9.3317tn. AGBI reports a 2027 draft spending plan of roughly 217tn dinars ($167bn), built on an assumption of about 4m bpd in exports.

Assessment: Volume is not revenue, and the minister was speaking about volume. Oil ministry spokesman Salim Al-Rikabi said last week that SOMO had been offering discounts to pull liftings through the southern ports and now wants to cut them — which means the barrels leaving in October are not worth what barrels were worth in February, and nobody has published the realised price. Treat 3.4m bpd as a ministerial claim until SOMO, Kpler or Vortexa put a number beside it, and treat the routing language with care: INA and AGBI describe tanker trucks through Syria, IraqiNews describes the port of Baniyas, and those are different claims about whether a pipeline exists or is being drawn. The 2027 budget already assumes 4m bpd. The debt curve is what happens when it does not arrive.