The Iraqi oil ministry has announced that Baghdad and Tehran signed a memorandum of understanding on Monday over the exportation of Kirkuk oil through Iran following a meeting between Iranian Oil Minister Bijan Zanganeh, Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi and his Iraqi counterpart Abduljabar al-Laaibi.
Beyond the pipeline, both sides agreed that Tehran would assist Iraq in mending its refineries. And to implement the agreement's terms, both sides will form a joint committee to oversee the processes, the statement added.
The Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) currently exports Kirkuk oil through a pipeline to Turkey’s Ceyhan port.
In 2015, the KRG and Tehran agreed to set up a pipeline to export Kurdish oil through Iran, but the proposal had not been implemented. The agreement was meant to be signed in May 2016 but the KRG was resisting making the final commitment, it was reported in the summer of 2016. Dabagh speculated at the time that Erbil was hesitant to sign because they have a 50-year deal with Turkey. In mid-2016, an Iranian official in Kurdistan revealed that Baghdad had not yet endorsed the plan.
The Kurdistan Region has an estimated 45 billion barrels of crude oil reserves, which it administers largely independently of Baghdad. There is also between 10 to 20 billion barrels of oil outside the Kurdistan Region in the so-called disputed territories that are predominantly Kurdish.
Since 2014, these territories have been patrolled by the KRG’s Peshmerga forces, including oil wells in Kirkuk and several fields in the Nineveh Plains. The deal with Tehran would give the KRG access to Iran’s Persian Gulf to ship its crude oil to international markets. Iran made the offer to Kurdish officials after a series of disruptions halted the shipment of Kurdish oil to Turkey’s Ceyhan port on the Mediterranean coast.
