Iraq Pauses Massive Prepaid Oil Deal With China As Prices Soar

Iraq has put on hold an oil supply deal with a Chinese company that featured an advance payment of several billion dollars as higher oil prices make the deal less lucrative than it was a couple of months ago. Iraq’s oil minister, Ihsan Abdul Jabbar, said in an interview for BBC Arabic that “We had concerns that oil prices would not rise above $40 when we announced this deal for the first time in the history of Iraq,” as quoted by Reuters. Yet shrinking global inventories of crude oil and the production and refining disruption…