ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Baghdad, Erbil, and international oil companies have agreed to extend a key agreement for the export of the Kurdistan Region’s oil for an additional three months, an official from Iraq’s state oil marketer told Rudaw on Thursday.
“The three sides - the federal government, the Kurdistan Regional Government, and the oil companies - have agreed to renew the agreement for the export of Kurdistan Region oil,” said Ali Nazar al-Shatri, director of the State Oil Marketing Organization (SOMO).
The current deal, reached in September, is set to expire within a week. According to Shatri, the renewed agreement will remain in effect until the end of March 2026.
Oil exports from the Kurdistan Region resumed on September 27 following a tripartite agreement between the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), the federal government in Baghdad, and international oil companies operating in the Region. Exports had been suspended since March 2023 after Iraq won an arbitration case against Turkey in a Paris-based court.
At present, approximately 200,000 barrels of oil per day are being exported from Kurdistan Region oil fields, according to Hamdi Shingali, deputy head of SOMO.
Under the terms of the agreement, the KRG’s Ministry of Natural Resources committed to supplying at least 230,000 barrels per day (bpd) to SOMO for export. An additional 50,000 bpd is designated for domestic consumption within the Kurdistan Region, Natural Resources Minister Kamal Mohammed told Rudaw in mid-November.
Mohammed said that, as of November, more than 10 million barrels of Kurdistan Region oil had been exported to international markets through the federal government.
He also noted that the Iraq-Turkey Pipeline has a total export capacity of 750,000 bpd, adding that prior to the 2023 suspension, the Kurdistan Region exported between 400,000 and 420,000 bpd.
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