ROME (Dow Jones)--Iraqi Oil Minister Hussein al-Shahristani said late Sunday that the country is currently producing more and exporting more than what it has in past weeks as oil operations in Iraq recover from recent tensions in the south, providing more barrels for the global oil market.
Al-Shahristani also said that the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries was pumping enough crude to supply world oil demand and that the 13-nation producer group did not need to provide additional supply.
"We're currently producing about 2.5 million barrels a day and exporting about 2 million barrels a day," al-Shahristani told Dow Jones Newswires upon his arrival in Rome for a major energy conference here.
The export figures compare with 1.5 million to 1.6 million barrels a day in late March, when insurgents in the southern Iraq forced a shutdown of a substantial amount of production and exports.