Kurdistan’s oil exports still waiting agreement with Turkey

Baghdad (IraqiNews.com) – After more than a month of stoppage, oil exports from northern Iraq to the port of Ceyhan in Turkey are still suspended, waiting for an agreement with the Turkish government.

Days following the statements of the Iraqi Oil Minister, Hayan Abdul-Ghani, where he said that oil exports will be resumed on May 13, which did not happen, officials in Erbil mentioned that Iraq is still waiting for a response from Turkey regarding its request to resume oil exports.

The Prime Minister of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), Masrour Barzani, mentioned in a statement on Sunday that the KRG fulfilled all its obligations, and is awaiting a final agreement between the federal government and the Turkish government to resume oil exports from the Kurdistan region of Iraq.

After Kurdistan exported its oil through Turkey without the approval of the Iraqi federal government, Baghdad resorted to arbitration procedures with neighboring Turkey in 2014 at the International Chamber of Commerce in Paris.

The arbitral tribunal issued a decision this year in favor of Baghdad, and the ruling led to the suspension of oil exports since the end of March, and obliged Erbil, the capital of the Kurdistan region of Iraq, to negotiate with the federal government in Baghdad.

According to the agreement between Baghdad and Erbil, oil sales from Kurdistan must pass through the State Organization for Marketing of Oil (SOMO), and not exclusively through the local Kurdish authorities.

The agreement also stipulates that revenues from Kurdistan’s oil exports must be deposited in a bank account run by the local authorities in Kurdistan and supervised by Baghdad.

The suspension of oil exports during the past period caused losses of about one billion dollars, AFP reported.

Oil has been the main source of income of Kurdistan for more than a decade, which used to export 475,000 barrels per day through the Turkish port of Ceyhan.