ERBIL, Kurdistan Region of Iraq – The Iraqi oil ministry is set to meet with the Kurdistan Region’s ministry of natural resources on Tuesday regarding the contracts of oil companies operating in the Region.

“The ministry extended an invitation to the Ministry of Natural Resources in the [Kurdistan] Region to visit Baghdad next Tuesday for the purpose of discussing and debating issues related to the concluded contracts,” read a statement by the ministry on Saturday.

The statement added that they have also extended invitations to the Association of the Petroleum Industry of Kurdistan (APIKUR) to attend.

APIKUR is an association of eight companies that together make up around 60 percent of the total amount of oil produced in the Kurdistan Region.

Iraqi Minister of Oil Hayyan Abdul Ghani said on Friday that they would announce the resumption of the Kurdistan Region’s oil exports “in the coming hours” through the state oil company (SOMO), an announcement that was never made.

Shortly after Ghani’s statement, APIKUR Spokesperson Myles B. Caggins III 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.”

“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,” Caggins added.

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.

After months of disagreements, Baghdad and Erbil eventually announced late February that they reached an agreement to resume the Region’s oil exports to the international market through Turkey’s Ceyhan port.

The inconsistencies in the Iraqi oil ministry and APIKUR’s claims come only two days after Reuters reported on Thursday that the Iraqi government is reportedly making “a fresh attempt to have all Kurdish oil production-sharing contracts declared illegal,” citing a court document and a government official.

The halt in exports has dealt a major blow to Iraq and the Kurdistan Region's economy, with over $27 billion in lost revenue to date.