ERBIL, Kurdistan Region of Iraq – Kurdistan Region Prime Minister Masrour Barzani and Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Muhsin al-Mandalawi on Sunday discussed resolving energy and revenue disputes between Erbil and Baghdad, during a meeting in Zakho.

A high-level Iraqi delegation, headed by Mandalawi, arrived in Zakho on Sunday to meet with the prime minister and discuss outstanding issues between Erbil and Baghdad.

The two sides discussed ways to resolve issues in the energy sector, mechanisms for exporting and marketing oil, and the management of revenues, according to a statement from the Iraqi deputy prime minister’s office.

The meeting “also focused on unifying visions regarding the management of oil wealth and regulating production and export operations within constitutional and legal frameworks, ensuring the rights of all Iraqis,” the statement added.

Budget allocations, public sector salaries, domestic revenues, and oil exports have remained a major point of contention between Erbil and Baghdad for years.

In September, the two governments reached an agreement aimed at easing some of their financial disputes and ensuring that public employees did not bear the consequences.

Under the agreement, the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) committed to exporting its oil through Iraq's State Organization for Marketing of Oil (SOMO) and transferring 120 billion dinars monthly to Baghdad. In exchange, Baghdad would send monthly salary payments to Kurdistan Region civil servants regularly.

Erbil has also repeatedly decried that the previously agreed-upon 50,000 barrels are insufficient to meet its domestic demands, calling on Baghdad to increase the quota to around 126,000 barrels, in accordance with the Region’s population.

According to information obtained by The New Region, the meeting was expected to discuss the 2027 federal budget draft, which Kurdish authorities have criticized for not properly meeting Kurdish rights.

The statement from Mandalawi’s office did not mention the federal budget.

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 draft.

In mid-September, 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. He argued that anything below that figure is “unfair.”