ERBIL, Kurdistan Region of Iraq - Erbil, Baghdad, and international oil companies (IOCs) are scheduled to meet again on Thursday after an anticipated Tuesday meeting was cancelled and another meeting earlier in the week bore no fruit, a well informed source told The New Region.

“The Government of Iraq originally announced that the meeting would happen on March 4. Then they held the first meeting on March 2,” a source from the IOCs told The New Region on condition of anonymity. “Now another meeting is likely to happen on Thursday.”

The source said that the Iraqi government controls the meeting schedules.

“We are prepared to send representatives when the meetings occur,” the source added.

The three sides met on Sunday to discuss the necessary steps required to resume the export of the Kurdistan Region’s oil, but the meeting yielded no result.

“There was no final stance, but all parties agreed to have additional meetings,” the source said.

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 the nearly two year halt, 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.

Speaking to Turkish state media on Sunday, Turkish Minister of Energy and Natural Resources Alparslan Bayraktar said that the “pipeline has been ready for operation since October 4, 2023, that is, for about one and a half years,” adding that exports would resume in light of meetings between Baghdad, Erbil, and the oil companies.

Speaking to The New Region on Saturday, Myles B. Caggins III, spokesperson for the Association of the Petroleum Industry of Kurdistan (APIKUR), said 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 is an association of eight companies that together make up around 60 percent of the total amount of Kurdish oil production.

The Region’s oil export controversies come amid the Iraqi government reportedly making “a fresh attempt to have all Kurdish oil production-sharing contracts declared illegal,” according to a Thursday Reuters report, citing a court document and a government official.

A source from the Iraqi state-owned oil marketing company (SOMO) told The New Region previously on background that the Iraqi side had completed all the necessary procedures to resume export.

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.