Believe it or not, Iraq is rapidly emerging as a rival to Saudi Arabia.
This has OPEC horrified, since a cash-hungry Iraq threatens to sink their global price-fixing regime.
Once Iraq more than quadruples its output capacity, OPEC will have to take steps to prevent Iraq from flooding the market, and force Baghdad to realign its supply policy with other members and stick to an output target. If not, the current level of supply and demand which OPEC has worked hard to achieve, which provides oil at a price it deems reasonable to producers and consumers - currently around $75 a barrel - will come under threat.
"This will certainly cause ructions within OPEC because Iraq has huge resources and we can only assume that the Iraqis are going to pump as much as possible because they need the money," Judith Kipper, the director of the Energy Security Group of the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington, told Deutsche Welle. "If they get to the predicted number of barrels produced per day, this is really going to be a real issue within OPEC."
Iraq looks set to shake up the Middle East's oil hierarchy after the Iraqi Oil Ministry ended its second bidding round last week, awarding seven oilfields in a tender which could eventually increase the war-torn country's capacity to 12 million barrels per day.
This has OPEC horrified, since a cash-hungry Iraq threatens to sink their global price-fixing regime.
Once Iraq more than quadruples its output capacity, OPEC will have to take steps to prevent Iraq from flooding the market, and force Baghdad to realign its supply policy with other members and stick to an output target. If not, the current level of supply and demand which OPEC has worked hard to achieve, which provides oil at a price it deems reasonable to producers and consumers - currently around $75 a barrel - will come under threat.
"This will certainly cause ructions within OPEC because Iraq has huge resources and we can only assume that the Iraqis are going to pump as much as possible because they need the money," Judith Kipper, the director of the Energy Security Group of the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington, told Deutsche Welle. "If they get to the predicted number of barrels produced per day, this is really going to be a real issue within OPEC."
Iraq looks set to shake up the Middle East's oil hierarchy after the Iraqi Oil Ministry ended its second bidding round last week, awarding seven oilfields in a tender which could eventually increase the war-torn country's capacity to 12 million barrels per day.
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