Iraq oil talks with Turkey vexed by $4bn Kurd debt

Bloomberg

Baghdad’s talks with Turkey about ramping up oil exports from northern Iraq, including the semi-autonomous Kurdish region, is complicated by a $4 billion debt that the Kurds owe to Turkey, according to Iraq’s oil minister.
Iraq is seeking an agreement with Turkey for all exports from the north, including the Kurdish region and the disputed province of Kirkuk, through a pipeline currently operated by the Kurds, Jabbar al-Luaibi told reporters in Baghdad. Iraq’s state-run Oil Marketing Co., known as SOMO, would control all exports under the agreement, he said. “The problem is that Turkey said they have debts with the Kurdish region amounting to $4 billion and Turkey is demanding their payment,” al-Luaibi said at a news conference. Iraq’s central government takes no responsibility for the Kurdish debt, he said.
Iraq expects to resume oil exports from Kirkuk province later this month, more than two weeks after the shipments were halted due to fighting between federal troops and Kurdish fighters, SOMO acting director general, Alaa Alyasri, said at the same conference.
The central government of OPEC’s second-largest producer rejected a Kurdish independence referendum in September, and it deployed troops that captured oil fields in Kirkuk from Kurdish fighters on Oct. 16. The offensive led to a halt in pipeline exports from northern Iraq to Turkey’s port of Ceyhan. The Kurds restarted exporting their own crude on Oct. 30, but shipments from Kirkuk remain halted.