ERBIL, Kurdistan Region of Iraq - An association of eight companies that together make up 60 percent of the total amount of oil produced in the Kurdistan Region said Friday that they will not resume oil exports until “there is a clear path for payments,” shortly after Iraq’s Oil Minister Hayyan Abdul Ghani said they would announce the restart of the Kurdistan Region’s oil flows to the international market “in the coming hours.”
Myles B. Caggins III, spokesperson for the Association of the Petroleum Industry of Kurdistan (APIKUR) told The New Region that "APIKUR member companies do not have written agreements and will not resume exports until there is a clear path for payments, among other conditions.”
Caggins added they "have not been contacted by officials regarding resumption of exports today.”
The APIKUR spokesperson went on to detail that the "APIKUR member companies have not received any outreach to establish new agreements that provide surety of payment for past and future exports consistent with our existing contractual legal and commercial terms.”
Iraq’s Oil Minister Abdul Ghani said earlier today that they would announce the resumption of the Kurdistan Region’s oil exports “in the coming hours” through the state oil company (SOMO).
"We will not resume oil exports today,” Caggins said.
After months of wranglings, Iraq and the Kurdistan Region eventually announced earlier this week that they reached an agreement to resume the Region’s oil exports to the international market through Turkey’s Ceyhan port.
As per the agreement, Iraq will take 185,000 barrels of oil from the Kurdistan Region in the first stage of resuming exports through the Ceyhan pipeline and will gradually increase to reach 400,000 barrels exported daily.
Turkey’s energy ministry, however, on Monday told The New Region that there is currently no decision on the resumption of the Kurdistan Region’s oil export, shortly after Iraq’s Oil Minister Hayyan Abdul Ghani said that the exports would resume in two days.
“No new decisions have been made and no time has been set,” the Turkish energy ministry said.
The Iraqi government is reportedly making “a fresh attempt to have all Kurdish oil production-sharing contracts declared illegal,” Reuters reported on Thursday, citing a court document and a government official, a move possibly creating obstacles for a speedy resumption of the Kurdistan Region’s oil exports.
Exports of the Kurdistan Region’s oil through the Turkish Ceyhan pipeline, where part of Kirkuk’s oil was also exported, were halted in March 2023 after Ankara lost a case against Baghdad in a Paris-based arbitration court.
The case accused Ankara of breaching a 1973 agreement by allowing the KRG to start selling oil independent of Baghdad. The halt in exports has dealt a major blow to Iraq and the Region's economy, with over $27 billion in lost revenue to date.
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