Iraq is planning to lift oil output by more than a million barrels a day to over 4 million bpd in 2014, in what would be the country’s biggest oil supply increase since the fall of Saddam Hussein a decade ago. Oil Minister Abdul Kareem Luaibi said Iraq planned to lift exports to 3.4 million barrels daily, including 400,000 bpd from the semi-autonomous Kurdish region. With domestic consumption running at about 700,000 bpd that would take total Iraqi supply above 4 million bpd, up from just below 3 million bpd now. That scale of production increase would raise the pressure on others in OPEC, chiefly Saudi Arabia, to curb supply to prevent oil prices falling. But industry experts and oil company executives working on Iraqi oilfield development say a 4 million bpd output target looks very unlikely to be achieved next year. They […]