Robert is of course correct that Haradh III started-up early in the year - it was officially opened on the 22nd March. They acknowledge a ramp-up period but I would still have expected to see impact on total production earlier than July. However, it would only have taken one or two significant process or equipment faults to push significant production back a few months. Without quality information we just don't know what actually happened.

I've been thinking about this a lot, and I agree with Prof. G's take on it here. We should keep in mind that the production data is hardly precise. From what I read, it is based, possibly in large part on the reports from PetroLogistics with it's tanker spotters and other strategically placed watchers. Given the uncertainty of the data, it makes no sense to keep one's nose too close to the numbers reported by official agencies, or, for that matter, the precise timelines of official announcements from the PR agencies of various oil-producing governments (such as the Haradh III announcement). Stuart's approach (and WT's as well) of assembling the various sources of data, plotting general trends, and drawing extrapolations seems the best we can do and in my opinion, is likely to yield a more accurate forecast than trying to pin down precise data points when the data is simply not very precise.