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Oil and Kurdish independence

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writes Salah Nasrawi, Iraq’s Kurds have pinned high hopes on oil to fulfill their dream of independence, but oil may also be undermining it,

2014-635537611083754977-375_resizedIraq’s Kurds have long argued that they have nothing to lose by fighting for independence but the chains represented by Iraq’s Arabs. For decades they have been waiting for, and sometimes trying to create, the right moment to go their own way.

When Kurdistan started extracting oil after gaining autonomy following the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, hopes were high among the Kurds that lucrative revenues would be used to build an independent economy and help them to break away from Iraq.

This year, as the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) started selling its crude independently, it cut most of its ties with Baghdad and started preparing for the day when the Kurds are able to erect the political barriers that will separate them from Iraq.

The KRG was hoping to generate finance and lay the economic foundations for Kurdish independence. The region has reserves estimated at 45 million barrels and initial exports of some 320,000 barrels per day (bpd), to be raised to one million bpd next year, in addition to huge gas reserves.

But a sharp drop in oil prices in recent weeks, with market forecasts for cheaper crude for years to come, have quelled the rush to leave Iraq. The sudden slide in prices and fears of revenue decline have forced Erbil to hand over its oil to Baghdad to sell.

The trend should be familiar in oil geopolitics: history repeats itself and oil wealth shows once again that it is a double-edged sword.

Last week, Baghdad and Erbil announced that they had reached a deal to end a lingering oil and budget dispute. Under the agreement the KRG will sell 550,000 barrels of oil a day, including 300,000 from Kirkuk province, through the Iraqi state-owned Oil Marketing Company (SOMO).

In return, the government of Prime Minister Haider Al-Abadi will start sending the Kurds about $17 billion, which is their share of the national budget, and an additional $1 billion for weapons and salaries for the Kurdish Peshmerga force.

The agreement should end a year-long crisis during which the government of former prime minister Nuri Al-Maliki ordered a freeze on the KRG’s share of the national budget over an oil dispute when Erbil started selling its crude independently.

While Al-Abadi’s government put out a vague statement, saying that the agreement “has established that the oil belongs to all Iraqis,” the deal was immediately declared as a breakthrough by Kurdish leaders. Some Kurdish politicians even celebrated the deal as representing consent by Baghdad to Kurdish claims to Kirkuk and other disputed areas.

There are not enough details, however, to confirm whether or not the deal is a breakthrough. It is only a one-year agreement that will cover Iraq’s 2015 state budget and clearly states that exports will be made through SOMO’s facilities in Ceyhan in Turkey.

As expected, disagreements also soon emerged. Kurdish Deputy Prime Minister Qubad Talabani said the Kurdish government will still be able to sell its oil after it delivers the amount of oil agreed on in the Baghdad agreement, according to remarks published by the Kurdish media outlet Rudaw.

Iraq’s oil ministry, however, denied this and insisted in a statement on Sunday that the government will consider further oil sales to be illegal. Some Iraqi lawmakers want the deal to be put up for debate in parliament, a proposal rejected by Kurdish MPs.

Moreover, the deal reignited resentment among Shias in the southern provinces, which produce the bulk of Iraq’s oil. They complain that their provinces are badly neglected even though they contribute a significant amount of oil wealth to the national coffers. Angry politicians in the southern city of Basra renewed calls to turn their province into an autonomous region.

There are also more controversies surrounding the deal. Some Iraqis have pointed to complacency by Shia political groups. Though the deal was endorsed by the government, it was negotiated by Minister of Oil Adel Abdel-Mehdi, whose Supreme Iraqi Islamic Council (SIIC) maintains close ties with the Kurdish leadership.

Before the US-led invasion, exiled SIIC leaders, including Abdel-Mehdi, worked side-by-side with the Kurdish parties in the opposition’s fight to topple the regime of former president Saddam Hussein.

Abdel-Mehdi had earlier reached an understanding with the KRG that allowed Erbil to receive an initial $500 million from Baghdad in return for its starting to pump oil to SOMO’s Ceyhan export terminal. That understanding has apparently opened the way for a new deal.

Facing these charges, the SIIC did not shy away from acknowledging the apparent complacency. “If the Kurds take 100,000 barrels of oil they have given us rule over Iraq,” SIIC spokesman Baligh Abu Galal told the Dijla television station.

“Without the Kurds, we [the Shias] could not have been empowered to rule Iraq. We are strong because we rule Iraq,” he said in a rare acknowledgment of the marriage of convenience that was part of the founding principles of post-US invasion Iraq.

The question that arises is not how the new deal was reached but why it happened now. Kurdistan has battled for years to secure exports of oil away from Baghdad’s supervision and has defied all efforts by the federal government to control the crude’s flow.

The KRG is already entangled in legal battles, including a court case in Texas filed by Baghdad to block Kurdish crude exports. In response, it has filed an appeal to overturn the Iraqi requests.

In June, following advances by the Islamic State (IS) terror group and its seizure of several Sunni-dominated cities in northern and western Iraq, Kurdish Peshmergas captured Kirkuk and territory bordering the Kurdish region, taking advantage of the collapse of the Iraqi security forces.

Kurdish officials vowed that they would never give the territories back to Baghdad, and Kurdistan Regional President Masoud Barzani called on the Kurdish parliament to prepare a referendum on independence.

Kurdistan has also been pushing the United States and other foreign countries to give the Peshmergas direct military aid, rather than having them receive the aid through Baghdad.

In October, the KRG unveiled plans to find funds through foreign loans against future oil revenues. It said the loans would offset financial difficulties created by the blocking of its budget by the Al-Maliki government. But the measure was also apparently intended to create independent Kurdish financial institutions.

All these measures show that the strategy being followed by the KRG is to justify its separation by showing that Iraq’s federal system is not working. Even after Baghdad and Erbil reached agreement on oil and the budget, KRG officials continued their defiant and provocative statements.

On Sunday, the speaker of the Kurdistan parliament, Youssef Mohammad Sidiq, told the Turkish Anatolia News Agency that the region will proceed with plans to hold a referendum on independence if “the Baghdad government fails to acknowledge the Kurds’ rights.”

Barzani’s deputy, Kusrat Rasoul, also said in remarks published Saturday, “Kurdistan’s flag will be flying over every inch of Kurdistan’s territory.” This was in apparent reference to the disputed territories seized by the Peshmergas.

One must look beyond the rhetoric in the fraught relations between Baghdad and Erbil in order to figure out if the Iraqi Kurds will keep their bid for independence on high gear, or if they will concede to bitter political and economic realities.

Contrary to the idea of a prosperous economy, as depicted in media-hyped images of Erbil’s construction cranes and new housing complexes, Kurdistan’s economy remains fragile.

With little industrial, agricultural, financial or communication infrastructure, landlocked Kurdistan remains highly dependent on its two ambitious neighbours, Iran and Turkey, for trade, investment and transport. The two countries are effectively financing everything in Kurdistan, from construction to oil installations, and clothing boutiques to food products.

Most villages in Kurdistan have no electricity or running water, and there are only a few paved roads. The unemployment rate is among the highest in the region and corruption and cronyism are rampant.

It goes without saying that shortages of finance will have devastating consequences on the region’s economy, which is already on hold because of the dispute with Baghdad. This is why the Kurdish leaders might now have found that going it alone isn’t any better, and maybe is even worse, than staying in Iraq.

While the plunge in the crude prices serves as a reminder of how geopolitically significant oil prices can be, there are other factors that must have influenced the Kurdish decision to agree to a deal with Baghdad that ends their independent export of oil.

A national homeland for the Kurds in Iraq has always been a nightmare for Iraq’s neighbours, with a potentially detrimental impact on regional stability. It could lead to the division of Iraq on ethno-sectarian lines and create a ripple effect throughout the region. If that happens, oil won’t save Kurdistan from a messy and even bloody Middle East.

By signing last week’s agreement, the Kurds must have realised that they will run high risks if they continue to give the independence option priority over tangible economic interests and regional stability. That could be reason enough for the KRG to look into a different scenario, at least for now.

Daesh (ISIS) smuggling oil via Turkey, Iraq says

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0929_GGR3Baghdad: Iraqi finance minister Hoshyar Zebari has said that the Daesh (ISIS) is smuggling Iraqi and Syrian oil via Turkey, and called it the richest terrorist group in the world.

“Daesh controls a number of oilfields in Syria and Iraq and they smuggle this oil overland through trucks, through middlemen to Turkey or towards other countries,” Zebari told Al Jazeera news channel Friday.

After an accounting of banks under Daesh control, Zebari said that Daesh is now believed to have looted about $500 million from Mosul, Tikrit and other cities, saying it was “the richest armed group in the world”.

He said Iraq was trying to crack down on Daesh financing, including oil smuggling.

“The air campaign targets these facilities in Syria and in northern Iraq in order to deprive them of this revenue but they have enormous financial resources; they are paying recruits good salaries, better than what we can afford to pay ours,” he added.

“And this is one element of the strength of this organisation. It’s not purely an underground terrorist organisation. It has an agenda it wants to control. It wants to rule.”

He also rejected comments by US officials that the fight against the Daesh could take years.

“Contrary to what many people think, I don’t think this will be a long drawn out battle,” the minister said.

The comments came after the Iraqi army managed to liberate two key districts in the city of Samarra on Friday.

He added that coordination between Iraqi forces and the US-led coalition is the key to the success of the offensive against the radical group.

Radio Liberty: Brenda Shaffer’s testy respond to question about her ties with SOCAR

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Brenda shafferA political scientist’s ties to Azerbaijan’s state-owned energy giant SOCAR sparked a testy exchange at a Columbia University discussion on European energy on October 23 when a student asked the scholar about her ties to the firm, reads the article published on the site of Radio Liberty.

According to the article Brenda Shaffer, a professor at Israel’s University of Haifa, responded to a question about her failure to disclose her links to SOCAR by grilling her interlocutor — journalist and Columbia graduate student Casey Michel – to which she replied that part of the American way is a right to privacy.

In early September, the American newspaper “The New York Times” published an article by Brenda Shaffer about the Armenian-Azerbaijani tensions, where, however, was no note about the author’s ties with the Government of Azerbaijan. Later “The New York Times” added to the article “Editor’s Note”, which states that the article did not disclose the fact that the author was an advisor to the head of the State Oil Company of Azerbaijan, despite the fact that Shaffer signed a contract according to which she was to report on the conflict of interest, real or potential.

According to the article, the exact role of Schaeffer at Columbia University event was also unclear. Under the previous version of the ad on the event, Shaffer was awarded as the “moderator”. In the updated version, however, another name was announced as a moderator. During the event, she was introduced as “a panelist,” but Shaffer quick fix her interlocutor. “Moderator”, she said.
As given in the article, critics accuse Azerbaijan of Baku attempts to present the country as an energy partner, at the same time, western politicians and human rights activists register growth of repressions and worsening of human rights condition in Azerbaijan.

Source: Panorama.am

Turkish dealers helping ISIL earn $1 million per day from oil: US Treasury

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WASHINGTON – The Associated Press

n_73423_1This file picture shows oil pump jacks pumping oil at the al-Jbessa oil field in is Syria’s Hasakah governorate. REUTERS Photo

The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) is earning about $1 million a day from black market oil sales, the United States has said, vowing to impose harsh sanctions on the purchasers of the oil, “including middlemen from Turkey.”

“With the important exception of some state-sponsored terrorist organizations, ISIL is probably the best-funded terrorist organization we have confronted,” David Cohen, U.S. Treasury Department undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, said in a speech at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington on Oct. 23. “It has amassed wealth at an unprecedented pace.”

ISIL is generating tens of millions of dollars a month through a combination of oil sales, ransom, extortion and other criminal activities, and support from wealthy donors, said Cohen, laying out the most comprehensive outline yet of the U.S. financial strategy against the group.

“It is difficult to get precise revenue estimates … but we estimate that beginning in mid-June, ISIL has earned approximately $1 million a day from oil sales,” Cohen said. Other estimates have ranged as high as $3 million a day.

Middlemen in Turkey

The undersecretary said ISIL was selling oil at substantially discounted prices to a variety of middlemen, including some from Turkey, who then transport the oil to be resold. “It also appears that some of the oil emanating from territory where ISIL operates has been sold to Kurds in Iraq, and then resold into Turkey,” he said.

However, the U.S. official also praised Turkey and the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) for being “committed to preventing ISIL-derived oil from crossing their borders.”

He also said U.S.-led airstrikes on ISIL refineries in Syria were also working to threaten the group’s supply networks, dashing a major blow its resources.

Cohen acknowledged, however, that ISIL moves oil in illicit networks outside the formal economy, making it harder to track.

“But at some point, that oil is acquired by someone who operates in the legitimate economy and who makes use of the financial system. He has a bank account. His business may be financed, his trucks may be insured, his facilities may be licensed,” he said.

“We not only can cut them off from the U.S. financial system and freeze their assets, but we can also make it very difficult for them to find a bank anywhere that will touch their money or process their transactions,” he said.

The Treasury also is going after individuals who donate money to ISIL and is urging officials in Qatar and Kuwait to do more to target terror financiers in their countries. A key, he said, is to restrict the militant group’s access to the international financial system.

October/24/2014

High-ranking Iraqi official says ISIL exports oil via Turkey

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193145_newsdetailIraq’s Deputy National Security Advisor Safa Al-Sheikh Hussein has stated that Turkey is the country that greases the wheels of the terrorist Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) by allowing the extremist group to export oil via Turkey.

“They have a stream of assistance that comes from Turkey. They export oil through Turkey. So we conclude that organized crime groups are working in Turkey from where the oil can be exported to Europe,” Hussein said in an exclusive interview with Today’s Zaman on Wednesday.

This statement from the Iraqi security official comes after US Secretary of State John Kerry said last week that ISIL financially sustains itself by exporting oil via either Turkey or Lebanon, urging Turkey to join the multinational coalition to fight against ISIL.

After the release of 46 Turkish and three Iraqi hostages by ISIL, the US expected Turkey to step up in the fight against ISIL. Turkey as a US ally is part of the NATO military alliance and has made commitments at various regional conferences to help in the effort against ISIL militants, but the help has been limited due to fears over the safety of the 49 hostages.

Hussein added that the issue of oil exports cannot be solved by one government and said it can only be eliminated by international cooperation.

According to Hussein there are 20,000 foreign fighters in Iraq and Syria and that the political instability and political crisis in Iraq, which lasted for some years, fed ISIL.

Asked to comment on recent claims about Turkey’s support for the radical jihadists, Hussein said both the general opinion among the Iraqi population and within the political community think “Turkey is extending support to ISIL.” He thinks this is not healthy for the ties between the two neighboring countries, Iraq and Turkey.

Hussein thinks the war in Syria was an opportunity for ISIL and that Turkey’s position on Syria had an influence on current developments.

“Turkey did not take the right position on Syria. Its policy and assumptions proved incorrect. We remember in 2011, the Turkish government thought that within a month there would be a regime change. But it hasn’t changed,” he said.

“We knew that it would not be an easy regime change. We thought the most probable scenario would be the division of Syria, which would threaten Iraq because the real force on the ground was beneficial for the extreme Islamists not for the people of Syria with their democratic needs,” he added.

Congratulating the Turkish government on the release of the hostages, Hussein called it “a good achievement” but questioned how it was achieved. “Some people use conspiracy theories to explain it. In Iraq, some people thought that something had been arranged from the beginning. That is not the official opinion. But some people did say these things, and they appeared in some newspapers claiming that “from the first day of the approaching threat, Turkey’s consul general in Mosul [Yılmaz Öztürk] knew about the attack on the consulate building.” But because of a lack of information, a lot of possible explanations have appeared,” he said.

 KCK accuses Turkey of backing ISIL militants

 

A Kurdish organization has accused the Turkish government of backing the ISIL militants fighting with Kurds in Syria and suggested that it could jeopardize a truce that Kurdish militants in Turkey began in March 2013.

The statement was issued Wednesday by the Kurdistan Communities Union (KCK) an umbrella group of the terrorist Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).

The umbrella group accused Turkey of “waging a war against the Kurdish people” and vowed to step up its “struggle.”

Index on Censorship: Power and money of ‘‘BP’’ encourage Aliyev regime to continue repression against civil society

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On the day of the 20th anniversary of the “Contract of the Century” Azerbaijanis sent a letter to the Director General of British Petroleum (BP) Bob Dudley, demanding to end bp-azerbaijan-1repressions in Azerbaijan. This is stated in the article written by Emma Hamilton, published on the website of the international human rights organization “Index on Censorship”.

As it is noted in the article on 20 September 1994 BP signed a contract with then president Heydar Aliyev to extract Azerbaijani oil. “This initiated the oil company’s two-decade relationship with Azerbaijan, providing money and power to Aliyev, which the letter argues, has hindered democracy in the country,” the letter reads.

Mirvari Gahramanli, The Oil Workers Right Protection Organisation Union says: “BP is where the president got his power from. What is he without the money? Where is his wealth, where are his police, without BP’s money? The Aliyevs have grown rich from BP and now as a result they have much more power,” she stated.

The letter is asking BP to call on the Aliyev government to release all 98 political prisoners currently being detained. It also asks that BP remove its sponsorship from the 2015 Baku European Olympic games.

Source: Panorama.am

Iraq sues Greek shipping firm for transporting Kurdish oil

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LONDON – Reuters

 Oil-ShipFile photo of the oil tanker SCF Byrranga, which was renamed the United Kalavrvta in March 2014. REUTERS Photo

Iraq has said it filed a lawsuit against Greek shipping company Marine Management Services (MMS) for its role in the export of crude from the Kurdistan region, which Baghdad says is illegal.

The case is the latest move by Baghdad to deter customers and thwart independent exports of crude from the autonomous Kurdistan region. The federal government claims sole authority to manage sales of all the oil in Iraq.

The Iraqi oil ministry said on Sept. 4 that MMS operated five vessels that had transported oil on behalf of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) from a Turkish port.

“MMS has actively facilitated the KRG’s illegal export scheme, repeatedly ignoring warnings that the crude oil it was carrying does not belong to the KRG,” it said in a statement, which did not specify when and where the case was filed.

“MMS is liable for damages of at least $318 million, and possibly significantly more, as a result of its willing and active participation in the KRG’s illegal crude oil export scheme.”

Athens-based ship manager MMS said it was not aware of any suit filed by the Iraqi government and maintained it was simply carrying out its business of transporting goods.

“We are not a party to this dispute, and any lawsuit filed against us by the Iraqi government is misdirected and ill-advised and will be robustly defended for lacking any basis and foundation,” MMS said in a separate statement on Sept. 4.

“The goods in this case are crude oil, which the KRG claims is rightfully theirs.”

MMS said if there was a dispute over the ownership of the cargoes, it had to be resolved between the government in Baghdad and the KRG “either through a political or failing that a judicial process.”

The Kurds began exporting oil in May via an independent pipeline, which links up with an Iraqi pipeline at the Turkish border to terminate at the Mediterranean port of Ceyhan. More than 10 million barrels of oil have been shipped from the port since then, Turkish Energy Minister Taner Yıldız said on Sept. 4.

The Iraqi oil ministry said MMS had declared false destinations for its tankers, turned off its ships’ tracking systems to avoid detection and undertaken ship-to-ship transfers of oil on the high seas at night, a process it described as “dangerous.”

US judge signs order to seize Kurdish oil from tanker off Texas

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By Terry Wade and Supriya Kurane

A US court has moved to seize a cargo of crude oil from Iraqi Kurdistan that Baghdad says was sold without its permission after the central Iraqi government filed suit to restrain export

The oil tanker United Kalavyrta approaches Galveston, Texas

(Reuters) – Acting on a request from the central government in Iraq, a U.S. judge has signed an order telling the U.S. Marshals Service to seize a cargo of oil from Iraqi Kurdistan aboard a tanker off the Texas coast, court filings showed on Tuesday.

The United Kalavrvta tanker, carrying some 1 million barrels of crude worth about $100 million, arrived near Galveston Bay on Saturday but has yet to unload its disputed cargo. The ship, which is too large to enter ports near Houston and dock, was given clearance by the U.S. Coast Guard on Sunday to transfer its cargo offshore to smaller boats that would deliver it to the U.S. mainland.

But Iraq’s central government, in a court filing on Monday, laid claim to the cargo that it says was sold by the regional government of Kurdistan without permission from Baghdad, which has said such deals amount to smuggling.

To carry out the order from Magistrate Judge Nancy K. Johnson of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas, the Marshals Service may need to rely on companies that provide crude offloading services.

The judge’s order said the vessel would be allowed free movement after the cargo is unloaded.

The U.S. State Department has expressed fears that independent oil sales from Kurdistan could contribute to the breakup of Iraq, has said the oil belongs to all Iraqis, and warned potential buyers of legal risks. But it has also made clear it will not intervene in a commercial transaction.

The filings on Monday did not name the end-buyer of the cargo in the United States. AET Offshore Services, a company in Texas that had been hired to unload the tanker for the buyer, asked in a separate court filing whether Iraq’s claims were valid.

Piecemeal oil exports have gone from Iraqi Kurdistan to Turkey and Iran by truck in the past, which Baghdad also opposed. But the opening of a new pipeline to Turkey earlier this year, which could supply the Kurds with far greater revenues, has met much fiercer opposition from Baghdad. One cargo of Kurdish crude was delivered in Houston in May to an unidentified buyer, and four other cargoes of Kurdish crude have been delivered this year in Israel.

The case is Ministry of Oil of the Republic of Iraq v. Ministry of Natural Resources of Kurdistan Regional Governate of Iraq et al, U.S. District Court, Southern District of Texas, No. 3:14-cv-00249.

 

‘ISIL sells captured oil to Turkey’

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Press TV has conducted an interview with Matar Matar, political commentator from New York, about the issue of ISIL Takfiri terrorists.

ISIL-OILPress TV: How much has infighting amongst insurgents groups in Syria been detrimental to the terrorist groups themselves?

Matar: Since September the area in eastern Syria surrounding Dair al Zawr and Raqqa has become an attacking point for the jihadists to fight for oil fields and these oil fields are becoming the main sources for funds for their activities and to fund their missions.

Recently the big advance that happened in Mosul and before last week ten days ago, ISIL or the new Islamic caliphate captured the biggest oil field in Mosul, which has the power productivity of about 30,000 barrels per day.

There are issues that they started selling these barrels, they started selling them since the beginning to Turkey and some reports mentioned that Turkish businessmen are selling these barrels of oil to Turkey as well for as cheap as 20 dollars per barrel.

So in summation the whole month of selling for about a month is about 50 million dollars. So here is the big question – of course they need funds and they need arms – so the big question is if you wanted to counter terrorism we should counter the arming and funding. The funding is coming from oil selling so we have to follow the Turkish government to whom they are selling this oil.

Some reports from the Turkish opposition mention that about one thousand Turkish nationalists are helping the Jihadists in their selling.

And also if we go back to the beginning of the crisis in Syria when the European Union sanctioned the Syrian government with the embargo on the Syrian oil… now where are those European countries to counter terrorism and make pressure on the Turkish government for further investigation and further measurements to stop selling this oil because these funds are going to the hands of terrorists. They might attack Turkey in the future or even Europe.

So this area is becoming a very strategic point between the ISIL and the other Islamic groups such as Jabhat al-Nusra. Recently they fled the area and ISIL captured them.

The Turkish Man Barzani in Ankara to Collect oil Money

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Iraqi Kurdish leader Massoud Barzani arrived in Ankara on Monday for talks with Turkish leaders, including President Abdullah Gül and Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

Barazani and GulBarzani, accompanied by three ministers of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) had talks with Gül and is due to meet with Erdoğan later this afternoon. The kidnapping of 49 Turks, including the Turkish consul in Mosul last month, by militants of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), is reportedly one of the main issues on the leaders’ agenda.

Reports allege that Barzani and the accompanying ministers are in Turkey to collect the Kurdish share of revenues from the sale of Iraqi oil, deposited in Turkey’s state-owned Halkbank, but Turkish Energy Minister Taner Yıldız denied such news, saying instead that the Kurdish delegation wants to turn temporary bank accounts opened for that purpose into permanent accounts. “They are coming, together with [Turkish] officials, for the opening of [permanent] accounts. We are making efforts to ensure that this becomes a sustainable business,” Yıldız told reporters.

Iraqi Kurdish website Rudaw reported late on Sunday that the Kurdish delegation in Turkey is there to make sure that the KRG can ultimately be paid for its oil sales through Turkey. “The purpose behind the visit regards a bank account for Kurdish oil revenue, which has been sold through Turkey, and transferring the account to the Kurdistan region,” Rebar Muhammad, the KRG minister of finance, was quoted as saying by Rudaw. Muhammad himself is part of the delegation, which also includes Deputy Prime Minister Qubad Talabani and Minister of Natural Resources Ashti Hawrami.

The Rudaw report said the KRG has at least $93 million in its account at Halkbank, but it has been unable to withdraw its earnings from the sale of oil exported via a new pipeline to the Turkish port of Ceyhan. This is because the Turkish government is still waiting for the resolution of a dispute between the KRG and the Iraqi central government on how to share revenue from the sale of northern Iraqi oil.

Yıldız said Turkey was not yet studying formulas that would open the way for the Kurds to take their share from the entire Iraqi oil sale. “We are talking about not only the northern Iraqi oil but also about Baghdad’s oil. The issue of splitting the northern Iraqi oil is not yet on our agenda; this is an issue to be taken up in the future. But, I have to say, we are working on [arrangements] concerning the rights of both Arbil [the KRG capital] and Baghdad,” Yıldız said.