When it came out that a deal was reached between the OPEC member countries to freeze production between 32.5 million barrels per day to 33 million barrels, we asked our readers to keep their fingers crossed, at least until the final agreement, which is supposed to happen at the November meeting. We cited two reasons to do that; one that such a ceiling would mean production cut for some members and we weren’t sure who might do that and the second one being the policing.

You can go through the previous commentaries here, here and here.

In recent days, confrontations between the members became public over the two issues. Iraq, Iran and Venezuela accused that OPEC secretariat isn’t rightly accounting the production levels from their respective countries. That is policing but relatively a minor issue. But what came out public more recently that Iraq has called for an exemption from any cuts. Iraq said that it is currently producing 4.7 million barrels of oil per day and it won’t go back. It even said that if not for the wars, Iraq would be producing 9 million barrels per day. According to Falah al-Amiri, head of Iraq state oil marketer SOMO, the production in Iraq has been compromised since the 80s due to several wars and though they stand by OPEC policies and unity it need not come at their expense.

As of now, it is becoming very hard to gauge, who might actually take a production cut in order to make the deal possible.