A senior Iraqi official has accused the autonomous government of Kurdistan of exporting oil from Kirkuk and Erbil oil fields without coordinating it with the federal authorities in Baghdad. Such exports, insisted an adviser on oil and energy to the Speaker of the Iraqi Parliament, is “unconstitutional”. Ali Fayad added on that the Kurdish move also runs counter to the federal budget law voted for by the parliament.
“The Iraqi parliament voted on the federal budget for 2015,” he told Anadolu, “which included a special clause on sharing oil revenues and the mechanism to export oil.” He suggested that the federal government “should re-examine the oil agreement with Kurdistan.”
The Kurdish ministry of natural resources announced on Saturday the sale of more than 12 million barrels of oil in June; it handed over more than 4 million barrels to the federal government. It stressed that the Kurdistan government was forced to sell the oil independently to pay its debts to oil companies operating in exploration and extraction of the region’s resources.
Differences between the federal authorities and the Kurdish government increased during the last year of former Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki’s time in office after he blocked the Kurds’ share of the state budget in response to their plans to export oil to world markets directly. However, international efforts led by the UN have been working to contain the differences since Prime Minister Haider Al-Abadi took office last August.
The agreement between Baghdad and Erbil, which was approved by the Iraqi cabinet in December, provides for Kurdistan to hand over at least 250,000 barrels of oil a day to the federal government for export, and the export of 300,000 barrels per day through the federal government produced from Kirkuk.