The Iraqi Minister of Oil, Hayan Abdul-Ghani, has announced that an agreement is likely to be reached with the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) and foreign oil companies operating in Iraqi Kurdistan to resume oil production from the region’s oilfields within the next three days.
During his visit to Erbil, Abdul-Ghani announced that Iraq had agreed with Turkey to resume Iraqi Kurdistan’s oil exports through the Iraq-Turkey pipeline, as reported by Reuters.
According to DNO, a Norwegian company, international oil companies operating in the Kurdistan region of Iraq will not export oil through a pipeline until the issue of late payments, estimated to be about one billion dollars, is resolved.
The Association of the Petroleum Industry of Kurdistan (APIKUR) reported in mid-October that the closure of Turkey’s oil pipeline in March resulted in a loss of $7 billion for Iraq, the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), and oil producers.
The oil pipeline inspection between Iraq and Turkey has been completed, and it will soon be ready for operation, according to the Turkish Minister of Energy and Natural Resources, Alparslan Bayraktar.
Turkey has started maintenance on a pipeline that was damaged by floods and passes through a seismically active area, say officials.
DNO and the other members of APIKUR will not resume exports through the pipeline until they receive their contractual entitlements for the oil that has already been sold and exported.
The company stated that it owed the KRG over $300 million in accumulated debts from previous oil sales in 2022 and 2023.
Turkey halted Iraq’s oil exports of 450,000 barrels per day on March 25 by blocking the pipeline from the Kurdistan region to Ceyhan port in Turkey.
Turkey suspended oil exports following an ICC arbitration decision in Paris.
The KRG exported oil without the federal government’s permission from 2014-2018, leading to Turkey being ordered to pay Baghdad $1.5 billion in compensation for damages.
In 2013, the KRG started exporting crude oil on its own, which Baghdad deemed illegal.
