Iraq's monthly oil exports rose slightly in April to 1.821 million barrels per day, from 1.815 million bpd in March, a senior oil industry official said on Sunday.

Falah al-Amri, head of the State Oil Marketing Organisation (SOMO), said that he expected total average exports for May to exceed 1.9 million bpd.

'This is because we have three million barrels of crude in our storage,' he told Reuters. 'And for May, we have signed contracts to sell more crude (than was sold last month),' he added.

Iraq sold a barrel for $47 and earned $2.6 billion from April's exports, Amri said.

He added that an average of just more than 1.4 million bpd were exported out of the southern oil terminals at Basra and that 408,366 bpd were pumped out of Iraq's Kirkuk oil fields in the north to the Turkish port of Ceyhan.-Reuters