Iraq earns $8.5 billion in revenue from February oil sales

Each barrel was sold for $92.

Kurdistan 24 2022/03/01 15:40

Flare stacks burn at the Nahr Bin Omar field, north of the southern Iraqi port of Basra, Jan. 21, 2021. (Photo: Hussein Faleh/AFP)

ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – Iraq earned $8.5 billion from oil sales in February, the Iraqi Oil Ministry announced Tuesday.

With a daily export of more than three million barrels of oil, the country sold 92,720,173 barrels in February, according to Iraq's State Oil Marketing Organization, known by its acronym SOMO.

Most of the oil was extracted from the country's oil-rich southern and central provinces, from where 91 million of the barrels originated. According to the ministry, the remaining one million barrels came from Kirkuk's oilfields.

Each barrel was sold for $92.

Due to the Ukraine Crisis, the price of a barrel of oil has surpassed $100.

Iraq's oil revenues increased slightly compared to January's total earnings of $8.27 billion.

More than 90 percent of Iraq's budget is derived from the sale of hydrocarbons.

Out of Iraq's population of 40 million, almost four million are still on the public payroll as the government remains the biggest employer in the country.