Kurdish oil exports to resume Saturday morning

 

Export of Kurdistan Region’s oil through the Iraq-Turkey pipeline will resume at 6am on Saturday, ending a more than two-year suspension, the head of Iraq’s State Oil Marketing Organization (SOMO) announced on Friday.

“Oil companies told us they are ready… regarding exports. Tomorrow at 6am the exports will resume,” Ali Nizar Faiq, the head of SOMO, said in a press conference.

A source from Kurdistan Region’s pipeline management told Rudaw that a team has been sent to the border with Turkey at Fishkhabour to make necessary arrangements to initiate pumping of oil on Saturday morning.

The resumption of exports is possible after Erbil, Baghdad, and oil producers reached a deal this week.

“A total, professional and just agreement was reached with Kurdistan’s natural resources [ministry] and with the working and producing companies in the Region’s fields for the purpose of handing in quantities of raw oil produced in those fields to SOMO so it could be pumped to Ceyhan’s port in Turkey,” Faiq said.

Iraq’s Minister of Oil Hayyan Abdul Ghani commented on the agreement on Friday, saying that for the first time in 20 years the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) has agreed to send 190,000 barrels of oil per day to SOMO and some 50,000 barrels will be kept for internal use and managed by Erbil’s Ministry of Natural Resources.

“According to the agreement, the oil produced in all oil fields in the Kurdistan Region will be received and between 180,000 and 190,000 barrels per day will be exported for the first phase,” said the minister.

Oil exports from the Kurdistan Region through the Iraq-Turkey pipeline have been suspended since March 2023, when a Paris-based arbitration court found that Ankara had violated a 1973 pipeline agreement with Baghdad by allowing Erbil to independently export oil since 2014.

“The purpose behind the negotiations that took 30 months in fact was to re-control and re-organize export operations from the north for the oil produced in Kurdistan Region,” said SOMO’s Faiq.

“According to the agreement with Turkey, exports will continue until July 2026," he said, adding that they are working to increase Kurdistan Region's oil production to 400,000 barrels per day.

A key component of the new agreement is for the KRG and international oil producers to meet within 30 days to create a mechanism for settling outstanding debts owed to the producers, which are estimated at $1 billion, the oil producers said in a statement earlier this week.