Iraqi PM Says Kurds Exporting More Oil Than Allocated
Iraq Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said the autonomous Kurdish region was exporting more than its allocated share of oil as the country seeks to comply with an OPEC output cut. In November, OPEC agreed to cut output by 1.2 million barrels per day from January 2017 to support prices. Iraq, OPEC's second largest producer, agreed to reduce output by 200,000 bpd to 4.351 million bpd. "We call upon the Kurdistan region to show more transparency and clarity in its exporting of oil," state television quoted Abadi as saying. He gave no figures or further details.
Pipeline Outage Almost Halves North Iraq Feb Exports
Oil exports from northern Iraq fell by almost half to an average of 350,067 barrels per day (bpd) in February due to an outage of the pipeline to Turkey, the Kurdistan region's Ministry of Natural Resources said on Monday. The nearly three-week outage is a big blow to Kurdistan, an autonomous region within Iraq that depends on revenue from its oil exports and is in the throes of an economic crisis induced by low crude prices. In February, the region received $303.9 million in revenue from its exports, the ministry said - less than half the 890 billion Iraqi dinars ($760 million) needed to cover a bloated public payroll.
Turkey Repairing Iraqi Kurdish Oil Pipeline as Violence Flares
Turkey has begun work to repair a pipeline taking crude oil from northern Iraq to the Mediterranean through its restive southeast and aims to restore flows soon, the Turkish energy ministry said on Saturday. The pipeline, which has been repeatedly sabotaged in recent months, normally carries some 600,000 barrels per day (bpd) of crude from Iraq's autonomous Kurdistan region and the disputed Kirkuk oil fields to the port of Ceyhan for export. Rising security threats in Turkey's southeast mean Iraqi Kurdish exports to world markets through the pipeline could remain halted for another two weeks, Turkish shipping and industry sources said on Friday.
Kurdish Oil Flows Shut as Pipeline Sabotaged in Turkey
Kurdistan's oil exports to world markets are set to be suspended for a second week running, a shipping source said, a move that will deprive Iraq's semi-autonomous region of its main revenue stream as the security situation in southeast Turkey worsens. The pipeline to the Turkish port of Ceyhan from fields in Iraq's north, which carries around 600,000 barrels per day of crude, has been halted since Feb. 17 and was unlikely to resume pumping until Feb. 29, the source said. The outage would be one of the longest in the past two years and a major blow to Kurdistan…
Iraq's KRG to Pay Oil Firms as per Contracts
Iraq's Kurdistan region said on Monday it would pay international oil companies according to their contractual entitlements in 2016 as it grapples with an acute economic crisis. The Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), which owes oil companies billion of dollars, began making ad-hoc payments last September to exporters that had previously gone unpaid for months. Some investment banks estimate that given the global slump in crude prices, foreign oil companies will in fact be paid slightly less under the new mechanism. Shares in Norway's DNO, Genel and Gulf Keystone Petroleum…
Iraq PM Says Turkey Main Conduit for Islamic State Oil-smuggling
Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said on Monday that most of the oil produced in Islamic State-held territory in Iraq and Syria was being smuggled through Turkey. Turkey has repeatedly strongly denied any state involvement in smuggling oil from Islamic State-controlled parts of Syria or Iraq and says it has made progress in combating fuel smuggling networks that have operated on its borders for decades. In a meeting with German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier on Monday, Abadi "stressed the importance of stopping oil smuggling by the terrorist gangs of Daesh, most of which is smuggled through Turkey", according to a statement posted on his website.
Iraqi Kurds Reassert Right to Export Oil to US Despite Court Ruling
Kurdistan reasserted its right to export oil independently to the United States and other countries on Tuesday despite a court ruling in favour of the Iraqi federal government, which has sought to block crude sales from the autonomous region. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in New Orleans on Monday dismissed the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG)'s bid to overturn an earlier ruling against a planned sale of oil to an unidentified buyer in the U.S. Iraq's federal government filed a lawsuit in a U.S. court last year to thwart the sale of the one million barrel cargo from the Kurdistan region in an ongoing dispute over the right to export oil. The tanker was stuck off U.S.
Iraq PM Visits Oilfield Where Locals Harass Lukoil
Iraq's Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi visited the supergiant West Qurna-2 oilfield on Tuesday after the state-run South Oil Company warned output could be affected unless protests by locals demanding jobs were defused. The SOC last week sent a report to the oil ministry asking it to defuse protests by villagers and residents of areas near some of the southern fields where most of Iraq's crude is produced, including West Qurna-2. Hundreds of locals recently blocked some entrance to Iraq's giant southern West Qurna-2 oilfield, operated by Russia's Lukoil, demanding jobs in a sign of the growing challenges facing foreign firms operating in the south.
Iraqi Kurdistan Says Oil Pipeline Sabotage Cost $501 mln
Repeated sabotage of the pipeline carrying crude from Iraq's Kurdistan region to Turkey had cost it $501 million since July 1, the region's Ministry of Natural Resources said. It had lost $251 million in revenue as a result of "persistent theft" from the pipeline "in addition to $250 million damage to KRG finances caused by the explosion on the pipeline at the end of July", it said. (Reporting by Isabel Coles)
Kurdish Oil Deal with Baghdad Unravels
A four-month-old oil deal between Iraq and the semi-autonomous Kurdistan region is close to unravelling after payments from Baghdad dried up, prompting Arbil to threaten to sue buyers and ramp up independent oil exports. The dispute highlights fundamental differences between the two sides over who controls oil resources and revenues and will reinforce the views of many Iraqi watchers that Kurdistan would seek bigger if not full independence from Baghdad one day. Baghdad cut budget payments to the Kurds in January 2014 as punishment for their attempts to export oil independently, plunging the semi-autonomous region into economic crisis and forcing it to seek loans at home and abroad.
Kurds Retake Oil Facility in North Iraq
Kurdish peshmerga forces retook a small crude oil station near the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk which Islamic State insurgents seized earlier on Saturday, but the fate of 15 employees remained unclear. Two officials from the state-run North Oil Co told Reuters the militants had seized a crude oil separation unit in Khabbaz on Saturday morning and said 15 oil workers were missing after the company lost contact with them. One of the officials and a Kurdish military source said the peshmerga forces had regained control of the facility on Saturday evening and were combing it for explosives.
Iraqi Kurdistan Oil Exports Approaching 300,000 bpd
Iraqi Kurdistan has increased its oil exports to almost 300,000 barrels per day, the semi-autonomous region's natural resource minister said on Thursday, adding he expects them to rise to around 500,000 bpd early next year. "We are now close to exporting 300,000 bpd through Ceyhan in Turkey," the Kurdistan Regional Government's Ashti Hawrami told a conference in the regional capital Arbil. He added that three more oilfields in the region are due to start production in the next two to three months, and said he saw exports rising to 500,000 bpd in January or February.
Iraq Sues Greek Shippers for Transporting Kurdish Oil
Iraq said it filed a lawsuit against Greek shipping company Marine Management Services (MMS) for its role in the export of crude from the Kurdistan region, which Baghdad says is illegal. The case is the latest move by Baghdad to deter customers and thwart independent exports of crude from the autonomous Kurdistan region. The federal government claims sole authority to manage sales of all the oil in Iraq. The Iraqi oil ministry said on Thursday that MMS operated five vessels that had transported oil on behalf of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) from a Turkish port.
Iraq Kurds say Oil Production Unaffected by Onslaught
Oil production from Iraqi Kurdistan remains unaffected by the onslaught by Islamic State militants, the region's Ministry of Natural Resources said in a statement on Saturday. "Oil production in the region remains unaffected, and is being delivered to both the domestic and export markets," the statement said. "Indeed, the (regional government) is expecting that the producing companies will ramp up production in the coming weeks". (Reporting by Isabel Coles, editing by William Hardy)
US Strikes Islamic State Artillery to Protect Kurds
U.S. warplanes struck Iraq on Friday for the first time since American troops pulled out in 2011, attacking Islamist fighters advancing towards the Kurdish region after President Barack Obama said Washington must act to prevent "genocide". The fighters had advanced to within a half hour's drive of Arbil, capital of Iraq's Kurdish region and a hub for U.S. oil companies. A Pentagon spokesman said two F/A-18 aircraft dropped laser-guided bombs on a mobile artillery piece used by Islamic State fighters to shell Kurdish forces defending Arbil. Obama authorised…
Kurds Seize Iraq Oilfields, Ministers Pull out of Govt.
Kurdish forces seized two oilfields in northern Iraq and took over operations from a state-run oil company on Friday, while Kurdish politicians formally suspended their participation in Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's government. The moves escalated a feud between the Shi'ite-led central government and the autonomous Kurdish region driven by a Sunni insurgency which threatens to fragment Iraq along sectarian and ethnic lines three years after the withdrawal of U.S. troops. The Kurdish forces took over production facilities at the Bai Hassan and Kirkuk oilfields near the city of Kirkuk, the oil ministry in Baghdad said.
KRG Controls Iraq's Kirkuk Oilfields
Kurdish forces have taken full control of the Kirkuk oilfields in northern Iraq from Baghdad, a senior source in the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) said on Friday. "The KRG was forced to act to protect Iraq's infrastructure after learning of attempts by Iraq oil ministry officials to sabotage it," said a senior KRG source on condition of anonymity. "From now on it will be under KRG control and we expect operations to start up soon," adding forces of the KRG's Oil Protection Force had moved in on Friday. The source said that the Iraq Oil Ministry had planned to sabotage a new pipeline that was under construction to link Kirkuk's three main oil fields…
Second Tanker of Kurdish Oil Leaves Turkey Despite Baghdad Protest
A second shipment of Iraqi Kurdish crude has sailed from the Turkish port of Ceyhan, industry and government sources said, increasing the stakes in a battle with Baghdad over control of oil sales from the autonomous region. The United Emblem suezmax tanker, carrying 1 million barrels of crude, sailed from the harbour on Turkey's Mediterranean coast on Monday, Reuters AIS Live ship tracking showed. The shipment is the second to leave Ceyhan in three weeks after arriving by pipeline. At least 2 million barrels of Kurdish crude are now at sea, despite protests from Baghdad that only the central government has the right to sell Iraqi oil.
Tanker with Piped Iraqi Kurdish Oil U-Turns Away from US
A crude oil tanker at the centre of a dispute between Iraqi Kurdistan and Baghdad has reversed course from its route towards the United States, ship-tracking data showed on Friday, indicating that the shipper may not have a buyer. The United Leadership oil tanker has become a symbol of a wider conflict between Baghdad and Iraqi Kurdistan over oil sales from the autonomous northern enclave, as it contains the first crude to come out of the region's newly built pipeline into Turkey. Since loading at the Turkish port of Ceyhan last week, the United Leadership set course for the U.S. Gulf Coast, according to ship-tracking and market sources. The U.S.
Kurdish Oil Tanker Leaves Moroccan Port Without Unloading
Iraqi Kurdistan's bid to sell its first tanker of crude oil appeared to suffer its second setback in as many weeks on Thursday after the ship left a port in Morocco without a sale which the central Iraqi government opposes. The United Leadership tanker, a symbol of a long-running feud between Baghdad and the Kurdish Regional Government over oil sale rights, loaded one million barrels of Kurdish crude on May 22 and has changed course twice abruptly without discharging oil. KRG Prime Minister Nechirvan Barzani said last week the tanker was designed to show Baghdad that the Kurds controlled their own oil sales.
