SULAIMANI (ESTA) — Iraq’s acting electricity minister Adil Karim said Baghdad was $1.6 billion in arrears on its payments for imports of Iranian gas.
Despite its immense oil and gas reserves, Iraq remains dependent on imports to meet its energy needs.
Iran currently supplies a third of its gas and electricity under a tightly controlled waiver from U.S. sanctions.
The restrictions, imposed when Washington reimposed sanctions on Tehran after President Donald Trump abandoned a nuclear deal with Iran in 2018, require Iraq to pay for its energy imports from Iran in kind, not in cash.
Karim said in an interview with state television on Wednesday that Iraqi arrears on payments to Iran now totaled $1.69 billion, according to AFP.
“These funds remain in the Trade Bank of Iraq and have not been paid to the Iranian government,” Karim was quoted as saying.
“With the funds, [Iran] is supposed to buy food products or drugs. This requires lengthy vetting by U.S. government or other bodies before the purchases can go ahead,” he added.
“Given the U.S. government has allowed us to import the gas, it should also allow us to release the funds.”
Frustrated by Iraq’s failure to pay its debts, Iran has already on several occasions cut its gas and electricity deliveries to Iraq, further aggravating the chronic outages that plague the Iraqi grid.
The Iraqi official said Iran interruptions in deliveries to Iraq were sometimes due to the shortfalls in its own domestic supply.
“When they need gas, they cut our supplies,” AFP quoted Karim as saying.
