ERBIL, Kurdistan Region of Iraq – A high-level Iraqi delegation has arrived in the Kurdistan Region’s Zakho to meet with Prime Minister Masrour Barzani and discuss outstanding issues between Erbil and Baghdad, including oil and the federal budget. 

The delegation, headed by Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Muhsin al-Mandalawi, includes Oil Minister Basim Mohammed Khudair, Electricity Minister Ali Saadi Wahib, and the General Manager of the North Oil Company Faisal Hammadi al-Jabouri, according to The New Region’s correspondent.

The meeting is expected to discuss the outstanding issues between Erbil and Baghdad, including the financial entitlements of the Kurdistan Region, the 2027 federal budget draft, and oil disputes.

Iraq’s Council of Ministers in mid-October reportedly returned the draft 2027 federal budget to the finance ministry for revisions, delaying its submission to parliament. The proposed bill had been contested and faced heavy criticism from Kurdish authorities in particular. 

A major point of contention in the proposed budget was the Kurdistan Region’s share. Earlier in October, the Iraqi parliament’s second deputy speaker Farhad Atrushi, a Kurd, warned that Baghdad’s draft budget contained “bad things for the Kurdistan Region.”

Speaking to The New Region on Sunday, Sipan Sherwani, a lawmaker from the Iraqi parliament’s oil and gas committee from the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) bloc, said that the Region’s authorities have “a lot of doubts” about the drafting of the budget.

“We want to change these articles that were decided upon unilaterally,” he said, adding that decisions regarding matters related to the oil and budget cannot be “implemented forcefully.”

“Erbil and Baghdad must negotiate and discuss to implement a fair budget,” Sherwani stressed.

In mid-September, Prime Minister Barzani said that the Region’s share of federal allocations must be based on its actual population size, which he put at 14.14 percent of Iraq’s total population, arguing that anything below that figure is “unfair.”

Another main dispute between the two governments is oil, with the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) repeatedly decrying that the previously agreed-upon 50,000 barrels are not enough to meet its domestic demands, urging Baghdad to increase the quota to 126,700 barrels, in accordance with the Region’s population.

Iraq has been facing a worsening financial crisis since the start of the US-Israeli war with Iran, with the closure of the Strait of Hormuz massively cutting off Iraq’s main source of income: oil exports.