Baghdad approves oil exports from Kurdish administration in north Iraq

Hurriyet Daily News with wires

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"Today I received an email message from the Iraqi Oil Ministry sending us their approval for the Kurdish government to export oil through the Iraqi pipelines to Ceyhan (in Turkey)," Ashti Hawrami, the region’s natural resources minister, told Reuters.

"The revenue from this oil will go to the Iraqi people. This will increase Iraq's export capacity," he told Reuters by telephone from outside Iraq.

On Friday, the regional administration heralded the start on June 1 of oil exports from the Tawke field, saying they would start at an initial rate of 60,000 barrels per day, or bpd.

It also said that 40,000 bpd of exports from another field, Taq Taq, would begin, traveling by truck and through an Iraq-Turkey export pipeline.

Asim Jihad, spokesman for the oil ministry in Baghdad, said the ministry would make any decisions about the launch of exports of crude from the region.

Although he denied on Friday that such permission had been granted, he declined on Sunday to confirm or deny whether that had taken place.

A long-running oil feud between Iraq's minority Kurds and the Shiite Arab-led government in Baghdad is part of a larger dispute over resources, land and power, one which has held up national energy legislation and cast a shadow over a country struggling to emerge from six years of bloodshed.