Saudi Arabia, the world’s largest oil exporter,
shipped less crude in June and exports also slid in fellow OPEC members Iraq,
Kuwait and Nigeria, according to official data.
The kingdom delivered 7.32 million barrels a day,
down from 7.79 million in May, according to figures the governments filed with
the Joint Organizations Data Initiative. Daily Saudi production fell by 20,000
barrels in June to 9.64 million.
Exports from Iraq, OPEC’s second-largest producer,
slumped to 2.33 million barrels a day from 2.48 million in May, the data
showed. Kuwaiti crude shipments dropped to 2.09 million barrels a day in June
from 2.23 million in the prior month.
“Exports were low from OPEC countries, as demand
was low in June, but production was high in many of them since local demand for
summer is pushing consumption up,” Kamel al-Harami, an independent oil analyst based in Kuwait, said on
18 August by phone.“Still, there are countries like
Nigeria, Iran and Libya who are cutting on exports due to their own problems.”
Nigeria and Angola, the West African producers in
the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, lowered their exports of
light crude in June by 0.7 percent and 3.6 percent, respectively, according to JODI. Algeria, another
African producer of light crude, reported an increase of 33 percent
in its June shipments to 704,000 barrels a day from 529,000 in May, the data
showed.
JODI is supervised by the Riyadh-based
International Energy Forum and uses statistics supplied by national governments
to compile data on production, imports and exports for oil producers and
consumers. The data include crude and condensates and exclude natural-gas
liquids.
Libya, Iran, Venezuela and the United Arab Emirates
failed to submit export data for June. The other members of OPEC, which
accounts for about 40 percent of daily global crude
production, are Algeria, Angola, Ecuador, Iraq, Kuwait, Nigeria, Qatar and
Saudi Arabia.