Iraqi government agrees with Kurdish Regional Government on oil exports
The Iraqi Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) and the Iraqi government have reached an agreement to restart oil exports to Turkey this week. The Iraqi government and the KRG have reached an agreement to restart oil exports to the north this week, a spokesman for the Iraqi Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) said today. Baghdad will notify Turkey to request the resumption of pipeline flows, the spokesman said.
Lawk Ghafuri, the KRG’s head of external media affairs, said following in a post on Twitter.
“After several meetings between the regional Kurdish Government and the federal government, a preliminary agreement was reached this week on the resumption of oil exports through Ceyhan. This agreement will remain in force until the oil and gas bill is approved by the Iraqi Parliament.”
0.5 PERCENT OF THE GLOBAL OIL FLOW
The stopped flows account for only about 0.5 percent of the global oil supply. In addition, the outage, which forced oil companies operating in the region to stop production, made oil prices rise again to $ 80 per barrel last week.
Sources told Reuters yesterday that under the scope of the agreement, Iraq’s oil exports would be carried out by Iraq’s state-owned marketing company SOMO and the KRG’s Ministry of Natural Resources (MNR). “Baghdad will send a letter of demand to Ankara for the continuation of the oil flow,” a KRG official told Reuters today.
WHAT HAD HAPPENED?
Iraq had gone to arbitration in 2014 with a claim for compensation, claiming that Turkey had violated the 1973 pipeline transit agreement by allowing the Kurdish Regional Government to export oil through Ceyhan without Baghdad’s permission.
On Saturday March 25, it was reported that Iraq had won the arbitration case in Paris, the oil flow on the Kirkuk-Ceyhan line had stopped and Turkey was ordered to pay about $ 1.4 billion in compensation excluding interest for the period 2014-2018.
On average, the Iraqi government was shipping 75 thousand barrels of oil per day through the Kirkuk-Ceyhan pipeline, and the KRG was shipping 370 thousand barrels of oil per day.
