Iraqi minister says oil exports from the Kurdish region will resume in a week

Oil exports from Iraq’s Kurdistan region will resume in a week, Iraq’s Oil Minister Hayan Abdel-Ghani said on Monday.

Reuters has reported that the Iraqi Kurdistan authorities have agreed with the federal oil ministry to restart crude oil exports based on available volumes. The announcement was made by Kurdistan’s regional government on Sunday.

This comes as US President Donald Trump’s administration is piling pressure on Iraq to allow Kurdish oil exports to restart or face sanctions alongside Iran, eight sources with direct knowledge of the matter told Reuters this weekend. An advisor to the Iraqi prime minister denied that there had been a threat of sanctions or pressure on the government during its communications with the Trump administration.

A speedy resumption of exports from Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdistan region would help to offset a potential fall in Iranian oil exports, which Washington has pledged to cut to zero as part of Trump’s “maximum pressure” campaign against Tehran. The US government has said that it wants to isolate Iran from the global economy and eliminate its oil export revenues in order to slow Iran’s alleged development of a nuclear weapon.

When oil exports from Kurdistan resume next week, it will mark the end of a near two-year dispute that has cut flows of more than 300,000 barrels per day (bpd) of Kurdish oil via Turkiye to global markets.

Reuters spoke to eight sources in Baghdad, Washington and Erbil, the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan, who said that mounting pressure from the new US administration was a key driver behind Monday’s announcement. All of the sources declined to be named due to the sensitivity of the issue.

Iran views its neighbour and ally Iraq as vital for keeping its economy afloat amidst sanctions. But Baghdad, a partner to both Washington and Tehran, is wary of being caught in the crosshairs of Trump’s policy to squeeze the Iranians, said the sources.

Trump wants Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia Al-Sudani to sever economic and military ties with Iran. Last week, Reuters reported that Iraq’s central bank blocked five more private banks from dollar access at the request of the US Treasury.

Iraq’s announcement on export resumption was hurried and lacked detail on how it would address technical issues that need to be resolved before flows can restart, added four of the eight sources.

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