Industry and Energy

Home page

Industry and Energy

Iraqi Kurdistan halts oil exports

12 September 2011 08:57 (UTC +04:00)

The Kurdistan Regional Government said Iraq’s North Oil Company had "serious technical difficulties" with its main export pipeline, which carries about 100,000 barrels of crude per day, and labelled "false" reports that exports had been deliberately suspended.

The KRG issued a critical statement late on Sunday following a tumultuous day in which Iraq’s oil minister, Abdul-Kareem Luaibi, had announced at a meeting with oil companies in Amman, Jordan, that Kurdish exports had been halted but the region had given no reason for the shutdown.

He said the move would result in "big losses" for the national economy.

Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki’s adviser on Kurdish affairs said the stoppage was a reaction to central government approval of a draft oil and gas law without consulting Kurdish leaders.

Iraq’s government in Baghdad and the KRG in Arbil have a long-running feud over oil and land. An export halt from the Kurdish region in 2009 lasted more than a year.

But the KRG blamed technical problems for a disruption of exports in recent days and "serious operating malpractice" at Iraq’s North Oil Company export system, which "resulted in the automatic shutdown of the main oil export of the region, which handles around 100,000 barrels of oil per day."