Iraq sees progress in talks with Kurdistan on oil exports resumption

Iraq’s oil minister said there had been progress in talks held on Sunday with Kurdish regional government officials to reach a deal to resume northern oil exports.

In Late May, Iraq’s oil ministry called for a meeting “as soon as possible” with the Kurdistan region’s ministry of natural resources and international companies operating there to reach a deal on resuming oil exports via a pipeline to the Turkish port of Ceyhan.

Traffic via the Iraq-Turkey oil pipeline (ITP), which once handled about 0.5 percent of global oil supply has been halted, stuck in legal and financial limbo, since March 2023, and talks to resume the exports have stalled.

The sharing of oil revenues between Iraq’s federal government and the semi-autonomous Kurdistan region in the north has been a cause of tensions between the two sides.

Flows through the ITP were halted after the Paris-based International Chamber of Commerce in a longstanding arbitration case ruled Ankara had violated provisions of a 1973 treaty by facilitating such exports without the consent of the Iraqi federal government.