Iraq wins arbitration case against Turkey over KRG oil
ERBIL, KRI, Iraq (North Press) – Iraqi officials announced on Saturday that Baghdad had won a landmark arbitration case that would halt oil exports from the Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI) by way of Turkey.
In a case dating from 2014, Baghdad considered exporting KRI oil via the Turkish Ceyhan port as illegal, and filed a case against Turkey in the International Court of Arbitration. It argued that Turkey was violating the provisions of the Iraqi-Turkish pipeline agreement signed in 1973.
The central government in Baghdad and the semi-autonomous Kurdish region in Erbil, the capital of the Kurdish Regional Government (KRG), have long been at odds over how to share oil revenues.
In 2014, the KRG decided to export oil through its own pipeline to the Turkish port of Ceyhan, without going through the Iraqi national oil company.
The International Chamber of Commerce ruled in favor of Iraq on March 23, and two days after the Iraqi’s oil ministry stopped pumping oil through its pipeline, which runs from its northern Kirkuk oil fields.
In turn, Turkey informed the Iraqi government that it will respect the arbitration ruling.
The KRG’s Ministry of Natural Resources said in a statement that the regional government will not “give up on the constitutional rights of the Kurdistani people”, adding that the arbitration ruling in favor of Iraq will not harm its relations with the central government in Baghdad.
“Our recent understandings with Baghdad have laid the groundwork for us to overcome the arbitration ruling today,” the region’s Prime Minister, Masrour Barzani, tweeted.
Barzani noted that a KRG team would “visit Baghdad for talks tomorrow, to build on the goodwill of our discussions.”