SULAIMANI (ESTA) – Nearly half of the revenue generated from oil exports in the Kurdistan Region will go to the oil production companies, said Prime Minister of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) Masrour Barzani Thursday.
The KRG spends 41% of oil revenues for salaries and 43% of the revenue will go to the oil companies, Barzani said during a press conference in Erbil.
KRG also allocates 7% of the Region’s oil revenue to pay back its debts and 9% is spent for oil exportation, he added. The KRG owes around $4 billion to the oil companies.
Masrour Barzani said a federal court ruling, which will require the Region to hand over its crude supplies to Baghdad, “violates” constitutional rights and authorities of the Kurdistan Region.
On February 15, the Iraqi federal court deemed an oil and gas law regulating the oil industry in the Kurdistan Region “unconstitutional.”
The Iraqi federal court’s ruling, however, was rejected on Monday by the Kurdistan Region’s presidencies, saying the Region would continue to exercise its constitutional rights on the matter.
“A recent ruling by the federal court is against all the articles and sections written in the Iraqi constitution,” Barzani said.
“The constitution has allowed” the Kurdistan Region to export its oil to the foreign countries without prior approval from the federal government, he added.
The KRG has been developing oil and gas resources independently of the federal government, and in 2007 entered its own law that established the directives by which the Region would administer these resources.
KRG crude is exported through a pipeline that runs from Iraq’s Kirkuk region to the Turkish port of Ceyhan.
Iraq’s federal government has long called for all oil exports in the country to go through it, having previously lashed out at Turkey in 2012 and 2014 for its role in refining and re-exporting oil produced in the Kurdistan Region.
