The April 15 meeting in the White House will be “an opportunity to reach agreement on oil production and exports through the Iraq-Türkiye pipeline, thus removing a key barrier to foreign direct investment in Iraq,” the Association of the Petroleum Industry of Kurdistan (APIKUR) said in a statement, adding that it is “optimistic that the high-level meeting between Al-Sudani and Biden will create urgency among all stakeholders to swiftly resolve issues and restore full production and exports from Iraq’s Kurdistan Region.”
Oil exports from the Kurdistan Region through the Iraq-Turkey pipeline have been halted since March 2023 after a Paris-based arbitration court ruled in Baghdad’s favor that Ankara had breached a 1973 pipeline agreement by allowing Erbil to begin independent exports in 2014.
Despite several talks between Kurdish, Iraqi, and Turkish officials, the exports have yet to resume and many international oil companies have suspended production.
Before the halt, around 400,000 barrels a day were being exported by Erbil, in addition to some 75,000 barrels of Kirkuk’s oil.
“The lack of agreement to resume exports has cost Iraq more than $14.5 billion in lost export revenues as well as the loss of significant employment and investment opportunities to the people of Iraq, the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), the Federal Government of Iraq (GoI), and International Oil Companies (IOCs),” according to APIKUR.
APIKUR also revealed that the US imported more than half a million barrels of oil from Iraq in March and “none of this oil was produced in Kurdistan region, despite the U.S. Government having directly invested $300 million for KRI’s oil and gas sector development.”
