Large discrepancies between surveys on OPEC production in March - Commerzbank

The OPEC production surveys by Reuters and Bloomberg again showed a considerable discrepancy for March, Commerzbank's commodity analyst Carsten Fritsch notes.

UAE and Iraq at center of survey discrepancy

"According to Reuters, oil production in the nine countries bound by production targets (OPEC-9) totalled a good 21.2 million barrels per day, which was in line with the agreed production volume. Bloomberg, on the other hand, shows a significantly higher OPEC-9 production of 21.8 million barrels per day."

"The United Arab Emirates and Iraq again show particularly large deviations. While both countries met the production targets in the Reuters survey, provided that the compensating cuts in Iraq are not taken into account, there was considerable overproduction in the Bloomberg survey."

"As Bloomberg also shows higher production for Iran and Venezuela than Reuters, the difference in total OPEC production between the two surveys is as much as 800 thousand barrels per day. This makes it difficult to say how high OPEC production and compliance with production targets were before the start of the production increases."