Shafaq News / Oil Minister Ihsan Abdul Jabbar announced today, Wednesday, that Iraq its crude oil prices exceeded Brent crude, which fell to $ 43.97 a barrel.

"For the first time in its history, Iraq has been selling crude oil for two months in a row at prices above Brent crude," the minister said in a tweet.

Brent Crude is a classification used for major trading, and serves as a benchmark for purchases on global financial markets, and consists of an oil mixture of 15 different fields, some of which are located in the United Kingdom and others in Norway which produce about 500 thousand barrels per day.

And based on the differences between it and other raw materials, it is generally sold at a higher price than the OPEC oil basket.

According to an official statistic by the SOMO National Company, Iraq lost financial revenues of $ 11 billion, due to the low prices for selling oil in world markets, compared to prices that were prevailing in the same period last year.

The company said that "Iraq sold during the first four months of 2020, approximately 409.96 million barrels of oil, at an average price of $ 38, with total revenue of $ 15.39 billion."

While it sold during the first four months of last year, about 423.28 million barrels, at an average price of $ 62, and revenues of $ 26.27 billion.

It’s noteworthy that Iraq’s oil exports make up to 98 % of foreign currency flows to the country, 45 % of gross domestic product (GDP) and 93 % of budget revenues.