ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - The head of the Iraqi Oil Marketing Company (SOMO) said on Monday the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) has yet to hand over its oil to the federal company, adding that they are ready to receive any amount. Erbil recently agreed to hand over all oil produced in the Region to Baghdad in return for its share of the federal budget.
Ali Nizar Faiq, General Director of SOMO, told the state-run Iraqi News Agency (INA) late Monday that the KRG has not delivered any amount of oil to the company. A recent agreement between Erbil and Baghdad obliges the Kurdish government to export all of the oil produced from its fields - estimated at 230,000 barrels per day - through SOMO while retaining 50,000 barrels per day for local consumption.
SOMO “has completed all contractual procedures for exporting oil through the Turkish port of Ceyhan, and is ready to receive any quantities delivered from the Region,” the head of the company said.
The KRG said in a statement last week that it is ready to export all its oil through SOMO, reiterating its adherence to “mutual understanding between both sides.”
Following the agreement, the Iraqi government disbursed May salaries for the KRG’s civil servants after nearly three months of delay. The fate of the remaining unpaid salaries remains unclear as Baghdad has conditioned any future payments on the resumption of Kurdish oil exports.
Oil exports from the Kurdistan Region through the Iraq-Turkey pipeline have been halted since March 2023 when a Paris-based arbitration court ruled in favor of Baghdad against Ankara, saying the latter had violated a 1973 pipeline agreement by allowing Erbil to begin exporting oil independently in 2014.
A final agreement between the KRG, the Iraqi government, and international oil companies operating in the Kurdistan Region on the future of Kurdish oil exports has not yet been reached.
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