Baghdad, KRG and IOCs to meet over oil exports

Iraq's oil ministry will meet on Sunday with the Iraqi Kurdistan ministry of natural resources (MNR) and international oil companies operating in the northern Kurdish region to discuss resuming Iraqi Kurdish crude exports via Turkey's Mediterranean Ceyhan port, a senior oil ministry source told Argus.

The ministry had called for a meeting "as soon as possible" on 29 May "for the purpose of… reaching an agreement to accelerate the restart of production and resume the export of oil… according to the quantities specified in the budget law."

Around 470,000 b/d of crude exports from Iraq's semi-autonomous Kurdistan region have been absent from international markets since March 2023 when Turkey closed the pipeline linking oil fields in northern Iraq to Ceyhan. That move followed an international tribunal ruling which said Turkey had breached a bilateral agreement with Baghdad by allowing Kurdish crude to be exported without the federal government's consent.

Baghdad, however, is preconditioning the IOC's attendance at the Sunday meeting in Baghdad on them providing a copy of the production sharing contracts (PSCs) they have with the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), a source with knowledge of the matter said.

"Every IOC was invited and will make their own decision about attending," the source adds.

The IOCs have previously complained about being left out of the ongoing conversation between Erbil and Baghdad.

But this new development could further complicate the talks, especially since Baghdad considers those contracts illegal, null and void, according to a federal court ruling.

Baghdad also says it has "never seen" the IOC contracts. "The oil ministry does not have a copy of the IOCs' contracts with the KRG. We have never seen them," the oil ministry source confirmed to Argus.

Baghdad had earlier proposed a middle ground agreement that would see it amend its federal budget to allow it to pay IOCs operating in Kurdistan, in return for a compromise with the KRG and the IOCs over the recovery cost they claim for oil produced in the Kurdish region.

Prime minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani said on 31 May his government has agreed to amend the budget law, but that the IOCs operating in Iraqi Kurdistan were refusing to amend their existing contracts with the KRG.

The Association of the Petroleum Industry of Kurdistan (Apikur), an industry body representing IOCs operating in the northern region, has denied those claims. Apikur in a statement published in May said its members would be willing to consider modifications to existing contracts provided the matter is agreed by Iraq's federal government, the KRG and the firms themselves.

By Bachar Halabi