Iraq’s autonomous Kurdistan region has delayed its plans to begin exporting oil through federal channels, blaming increased violence that has crippled the Iraq-Turkey Pipeline.
The Ministry of Natural Resources in Kurdistan Regional Government announced on Tuesday, that the region will not export the amount of oil proposed by the region from the first of the current month at the request of the Federal Ministry of Oil for maintenance and renewal acts of the oil pipeline from Kirkuk to the Turkish port of Ceyhan.
Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) prime minister Nechirvan Barzani had announced that the region would start exporting 100,000 bpd on April 1 in a “goodwill gesture” to ease tension with Baghdad over oil disputes.
The announcement noted that since the initiative announcement, Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) has cooperated closely with the senior officials of the Federal Ministry of Oil in Baghdad and the North Oil Company (NOC) in Kirkuk, to start the process of exporting oil.
He added that as a result of that, it was agreed on practical measures to be able to export the amount offered by the region. However, the statement that due to the ongoing reform processes on the main export pipeline between Kirkuk and the Turkish port of Ceyhan , Ministry of Oil and the NOC have announced that they are not ready to receive any oil from Kurdistan region at the present time. The statement noted that it was agreed that as soon as the repair is completed, KRG will export oil as committed to Barzani’s initiative.
The issue of oil export from the region is considered of the contentious issues between Baghdad and Erbil, and caused the failure of Iraq to pass the budget for the current year after the rejection of the Kurdish side to some paragraphs considered as sanctions for the region.
Some of the paragraphs of the budget included binding Erbil to export 400 000 barrels of oil per day , through the Iraqi oil marketing company ” SOMO ” , otherwise the federal government will cut the region’s share of the budget , which was rejected by Kurdish blocs in parliament and boycotted the meetings of the parliament to read and vote on them.
