Flowing: Iraq starts exports from Kurdistan
Iraq starts pumping from Kurdistan
Iraq started exporting crude from the largely autonomous Kurdistan region for the first time today, with oil from the Tawke field flowing into a pipeline linked to the Turkish port of Ceyhan.
"We finished linking the pipelines from the Tawke oilfield to the strategic Kirkuk-Ceyhan pipeline and have installed the meters. We started ... pumping 10,000 barrels per day to boost exports to Ceyhan port today," an Oil Ministry spokesman told Reuters.
"The pumping will continue at a rate of 10,000 bpd for some days to check the efficiency of the pipelines from Tawke to the network ... then we will gradually increase the quantities."
On Monday, Addax Petroleum said it expects to start crude exports from its facility in Kurdistan on Sunday, despite a row between Iraq's central government and the Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) over oil contracts that the KRG signed independently with foreign players.
Baghdad has repeatedly said the deals are illegal. It insists oil deals with foreign companies should be fixed-fee service contracts, not production sharing contracts of the type signed by the KRG.
Earlier this month the Oil Ministry said it would begin exporting oil from Kurdistan's Tawke and Taq Taq fields, but it still rejects Kurdish deals with companies like Addax and Norway's DNO International , which are developing the fields.
It is not yet clear how the KRG plans to pay the companies for their cut of the exports, agreed in the production sharing contracts, if Baghdad does not honour them. The KRG receives 17% of total state oil revenues from the national budget.
The Kurdish government had earlier put the expected starting rate at 60,000 bpd from the Tawke field through Iraq's northern pipeline, starting 1 June, with another 40,000 bpd from Taq Taq travelling by truck and through the pipeline soon afterwards.
Oil Minister Hussain Shahristani faces mounting pressure to act quickly to increase sluggish oil output, running at around 2.3 million to 2.4 million bpd, and turn around an industry in dire need of investment after decades of sanctions, neglect and war.
Kurdish officials estimate there are oil reserves of at least 40 billion to 45 billion barrels of crude in the area now recognised as largely autonomous Kurdistan.