An independent survey found that crude oil exports by OPEC producers stood at 19.4 million bpd during the second quarter of 2020, 4% lower than 20.28 million bpd in the previous quarter. OPEC crude exports declined from an average of 22.35 million b/d in April to 18.6 million b/d in May, and fell further to 17.2 million b/d in June, the survey showed.
According to the survey, OPEC crude exports reached an average of 19.5 million bpd in the first 20 days of July, driven by additional shipments from the Middle East, especially from Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. On the other hand, Iran’s exports remained extremely low at less than 100,000 bpd during the period.
Iraq, a regular violator of OPEC+ supply cut deal, improved its compliance, with its exports decreasing to 3.17 million bpd in June. On July 1-20, Iraq’s exports were only marginally up to 3.21 million bpd. Nigeria, which also flouted the deal regularly, managed to reduce its exports significantly during the period.
China, India, Japan, and South Korea continued to be heavily dependent on oil supply from OPEC producers. However, these markets also took significant volumes of crude oil from non-OPEC suppliers such as Russia, the US, Brazil, and Norway.
OPEC and its allies have decided to keep the current output cuts of 9.7 million bpd to remain in place until the end of July, but they also agreed to loosen the curbs to 7.7 million bpd from August onwards. Some countries such as Iraq and Nigeria are expected to keep exports low to compensate for their lack of compliance earlier this year.
