Baghdad to supervise northern Iraq’s oil exports starting Monday
A worker at the Tawke oil refinery in northern Iraq
Baghdad – Iraq’s autonomous Kurdistan region is to resume oil exports though Turkey Monday but in the future they will be supervised by the federal government in Baghdad, officials from both sides said.
The outcome, thrashed out in talks between federal and regional officials, spells the end of independent oil exports by the Kurdish regional government and marks a clear limit to its autonomy.
Ankara had stopped handling Iraqi Kurdish oil last month after an international tribunal ruled in a nine-year-old dispute that Baghdad was right to insist on overseeing all Iraqi oil exports.
“Sales of Kurdistan crude will be managed from now on by the State Oil Marketing Organization,” a federal government official told AFP on Saturday.
A “joint committee” formed by the federal and regional governments will supervise the export process, the official added.
Revenues will be paid into an account “overseen by Baghdad”, a Kurdish official said.
The halt to exports through a pipeline to the Turkish Mediterranean port of Ceyhan had left foreign oil firms with nowhere to pump Kurdish oil.