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Despite its war with ISIS, Iraq is pumping oil at a pace not seen in nearly 40 years, and the spigot will be opened still wider by a deal reached Tuesday between Baghdad and the Kurds, energy experts and U.S. officials say.

"They've been able to ramp it up quite impressively, despite ISIS," oil trader John Kilduff said of the Iraqis' oil production, which hit 3.4 million barrels a day in November. That level, which earned Baghdad $5.2 billion, was 100,000 barrels higher than the previous month and meant that Iraq is now pumping more oil than any OPEC member other than Saudi Arabia.

Tuesday's deal between the central government and the Kurdish regional government in Erbil will increase production, raising more money to fight ISIS and adding downward pressure on global oil prices, already are at their lowest levels in years, according to Kilduff and other experts.

Kilduff said Western investment and the ready availability of superior U.S. drilling equipment -- denied for decades because of sanctions against the government of Saddam Hussein - have helped Iraq increase its production in the midst of conflict.

But Iraqi geography and ethnic and sectarian divisions also have played a significant role in keeping the nation's rich oil fields out of harm's way.

The Sunni terrorists of ISIS control a 400-mile long swath of mostly Sunni Muslim territory in Iraq and Syria -- stretching from Mosul, a city of 700,000 in northern Iraq, to Reqqa in central Syria - but have not been able to extend its reach into oil-rich areas of Iraq in the far south, where Iraq's Shiite majority is dominant, or in the Kurdistan region, home of Iraq's Kurdish population.

Oil tankers dock at a floating platform on Sept. 21, offshore from the southern Iraqi port city of Al Faw, south of Basra.

It has gained control of small refineries, and for a time held the huge Baiji refinery north of Baghdad, but there are no significant oil reserves in the Iraqi portion of its self-declared caliphate.

"They control a lot of sand," said one U.S. official.

The oil that ISIS has been able to sell on the black market in Turkey -- estimated to be around 25,000 to 30,000 barrels a day, at prices as low as $25 a barrel -- comes not from Iraqi wells, but from declining wells in Syria, near the contested city of Aleppo, U.S. intelligence officials say. Tuesday's agreement between the Iraqi government and the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) is expected to further tilt that balance in favor of Iraq.

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Why Iraq Is Pumping Oil Like Crazy, Despite ISIS