SULAIMANI (ESTA) – Iraqi National Oil Company will establish a committee to implement a federal court ruling which will require the Kurdistan Region to hand over its crude supplies to Baghdad.
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.
“The committee will present its decisions and commandments to the oil ministry to assure the implementation of the decisions [by the federal court],” according to a communique signed by the Iraqi oil minister Ihsan Abdul Jabbar.
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.
