NEW YORK, April 11 (UPI) -- Output last month from the world oil cartel's 11 members, including Iraq, fell last month.
The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries produced an average 29.76 million barrels per day of crude in March, down 160,000 barrels per day from February's 29.92 million, oil industry analyst Platts said Tuesday.
Excluding Iraq, production from the 10 members with quotas fell by 190,000 barrels per day to 27.94 million barrels per day and below the official 28-million-barrels-per-day output ceiling.
Nigeria, where militants in the Niger Delta have intensified attacks on oil installations since the beginning of this year, accounted for the biggest single fall in volume -- 220,000 barrels per day.
News of the declining output comes as the futures price of high-quality crude oil approached $70 per barrel.
"Even with oil prices well above $60/barrel, OPEC doesn't appear to be trying to make up for the fall in Nigerian volumes, which supports the view that OPEC-10 production is constrained around the level of the 28 million b/d official ceiling," wrote John Kingston, global director of oil at Platts.
