OPEC oil production surged last month, more than making up for a decline in Iranian supply due to U.S. economic sanctions, the International Energy Agency said Thursday.
In its closely watched monthly oil market report, the IEA said crude oil CLV8, -1.38% LCOX8, -0.73% output in the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries climbed in August by 420,000 barrels a day, to average 32.63 million barrels a day.
That was the cartel’s biggest month-on-month increase in more than two years, bringing the supply from the group’s 15 producers to a nine-month high. The increase mainly came from higher production in Libya, Iraq, Nigeria and Saudi Arabia—the de-facto head of OPEC.
The jump in production “far outweighed losses from Iran ahead of U.S. sanctions,” the agency said, in a sign that Saudi Arabia—the world’s largest exporter of crude—and its production allies are moving rapidly to fill global supply outages and keep the market in balance.
An expanded version of this article appears on WSJ.com
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