Oil firms operating in the Kurdistan Region have stopped production or reduced output and diverted it into storage after a Paris arbitration court late March ruled that Turkey had violated an agreement with Iraq by allowing the Kurdistan Region to begin independent oil exports in 2014.
“The [Kurdistan] Region had to accept contracts that required some form of compliance, it reached a point of exploitation by the [oil] companies. They exploited the Region around 2014 with the war against ISIS [Islamic State] and the lack of a budget for the Region,” said Sudani in an interview with Al-Jazeera which aired on Sunday evening.
The premier also noted that upon the formation of the new Iraqi cabinet in Ocotber, Erbil and Baghdad agreed to draft an oil and gas law under six months, admitting that the process will take longer that the originally-set deadline.
Calls for drafting a joint oil and gas law between Erbil and Baghdad have resurfaced since the formation of the new Iraqi government under Sudani in October, after a ruling from Iraq’s top court in February 2022 deeming the Kurdistan Region’s oil and gas law “unconstitutional” escalated tensions between the KRG and the federal government.
Sudani added that through the oil and gas law the federal government will manage the oil fields discovered after 2003, but will also grant the Kurdistan Region and the provinces themselves a margin to manage their own fields.
Iraq’s state-owned oil firm (SOMO) said on Sunday that an agreement with the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) on the resumption of oil exports through the Iraq-Turkey pipeline is expected to be announced soon.
