Iraq, one of the oil producers worst hit by the oil price crash, is proposing that all foreign oil firms operating in OPEC’s second-largest producer cut their budgets by 30 percent on the condition that crude production levels do not suffer, Reuters reported on Friday, quoting local officials and industry sources. Iraq is struggling at oil below $30 a barrel, and its oil ministry is having trouble repaying international oil companies that develop major oil fields in the southern part of the country. Foreign firms who develop Iraqi oil fields do so under service contracts and are being paid a fixed fee in U.S. dollars for their oil production. Now that Iraq’s fellow OPEC member Saudi Arabia signals a wave of extra oil supply to the market and the coronavirus pandemic batters global oil demand, oil prices in the $20s are utterly unsustainable for Iraq’s oil revenues and total […]