Iraq Overtaking Saudi Arabia in Supplying U.S. With Oil

(Bloomberg) -- Iraq surpassed Saudi Arabia as a crude supplier to the U.S. in September, and it’s poised to repeat that this month.

Iraq’s 18.8 million barrels in oil shipments to the U.S. last month topped those from the kingdom, the world’s biggest oil exporter, by about 2.9 million barrels, according to U.S. Customs Bureau data compiled by Bloomberg oil-market specialist Bert Gilbert. So far in October, Saudi Arabia lags Iraq by about 3.2 million barrels.

The kingdom has been a larger supplier to the U.S. for most of the past quarter century, data from the Energy Information Administration show. Iraq sent more than 1 million barrels a day of crude last week to the U.S., about 500,000 barrels a day more than the kingdom.

To contact the reporter on this story: Sheela Tobben in New York at vtobben@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editors responsible for this story: David Marino at dmarino4@bloomberg.net, Margot Habiby, Debarati Roy

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