The Kurdistan Regional Government announced that it had reached an agreement with Baghdad regarding the resumption of exporting the region’s oil through the Turkish port of Ceyhan, and sent an official request, pending the Turkish response, more than a month after it stopped.
“The Kurdistan Regional Government and the federal government reached an agreement on resuming oil exports from the Kurdistan region,” it said in a statement.
The statement added that the “SOMO Company”, which is specialized in marketing Iraqi oil, “officially requested on May 10, 2023 from the Turkish side to resume the process of exporting the oil of the Kurdistan region through the Kirkuk-Ceyhan pipeline.”
According to the statement, after this request, “both the Federal Ministries of Natural Resources and Oil are awaiting the Turkish response to resume oil exports.”
Iraq had initiated arbitration proceedings with Turkey in 2014 at the International Chamber of Commerce in Paris, against the background of Ankara exporting Kurdistan region oil through the port of Ceyhan for a long time without the approval of the federal authorities in Baghdad.
This year, the arbitral tribunal issued its decision in favor of Baghdad and obligated Turkey to pay compensation to Iraq, and this led Ankara to stop oil imports from Kurdistan on March 25, and it has not appealed so far, for technical and financial reasons.
Source: National Iraqi News Agency