Yesterday’s monthly oil market report from OPEC showed that oil production from Kazakhstan likely increased by 180,000 bpd in 2017 to 1.74 million barrels per day. Such a rise gives Kazakhstan the unenviable accolade of being the most out-of-compliance producer in the OPEC / NOPEC production cut deal – surpassing Iraq (some feat). Digging into our export flows, we see a similar story of surging. Kazakhstan committed to cutting production by 20,000 bpd as part of the OPEC / NOPEC deal. According to our model, we should have seen a fairly commensurate drop in exports for the country to be in compliance, but instead we saw exports last year of Kazakh CPC blend and Batumi crude increase by … (drum roll) … just over 200,000 bpd. Export loadings outpaced year-ago levels every month last year except January. The current year has started on the front foot; export loadings so far in January reflect ongoing strength.