Today, Saturday, the Kurdish media network (Rudaw) reported that oil exports from the Kurdistan region of Iraq will resume within 48 hours.
The network said that it obtained information from the Iraqi Ministry of Oil stating that a joint room will be formed between the Ministry of Natural Resources of the Kurdistan Region and the Iraqi Oil Marketing Company (SOMO), whose mission will be to sell the region’s oil.
She added that the position of deputy director of SOMO will be given to the Kurds, “in order for the Kurdish side to also participate in the process of selling Iraqi and Kurdistan oil,” according to the Arab World News Agency.
She indicated that a meeting, which she described as positive, was held between the representatives of the region and the Iraqi federal government, “and they agreed on a new mechanism for selling the oil of the Kurdistan region jointly.”
Rudaw said: “This last meeting will be followed by a series of other meetings for the agreement, clarifying the oil contracts for the Kurdistan region, and finding new consumers for the region’s oil exported from the port of Ceyhan… In this way, this agreement will give guarantees to the producing companies and consumers of the Kurdistan region’s oil.”
The Iraqi Ministry of Oil had announced that Baghdad had won an arbitration case in the case of exporting Kurdistan region’s oil via Turkey to global markets, and said that the decision obliges all parties to respect international agreements and covenants in this regard.
The ministry indicated that it is “the only authority authorized” to manage export operations through the Turkish port of Ceyhan, through “SOMO”.
Earlier, Rudaw quoted a US State Department official as saying that his country had urged Turkey and Iraq to resume exporting Kurdistan region’s oil through the pipeline linking the region and Turkey.
