By
Ercan Ersoy and Nayla Razzouk - Sep 24, 2012 1:54 PM GMT+0300
Iraq’s government will
start making payments to international oil companies working in the northern
Kurdish region next week, said Ashti Hawrami, natural
resources minister in the Kurdistan Regional Government.
The federal government
will initially pay two thirds of 1 trillion dinars ($858.3 million) and will
complete the payment later, he said today at a conference in Istanbul, without
being more specific on the time frame.
Iraq’s central government
reached an accord earlier this month to end the dispute over payments related
to international oil companies operating in the country’s semi-autonomous
northern Kurdish area. The disagreement, which had prompted the Kurds to halt
crude exports for about four months this year, had escalated after Exxon Mobil Corp. (XOM), Chevron Corp. (CVX) and Total SA (FP),
committed to doing business in the region.
The Kurdistan Regional
Government plans to complete oil and gas export pipelines direct toTurkey in the next
two years that will end the Kurds’ reliance on the central government’s
infrastructure. Those links are due to be operational by early 2014, Hawrami
said. The oil pipeline will have a capacity of 1 million barrels a day, he
said.
The Kurdish region’s oil
exports are due to reach 1 million barrels a day by 2015 and gas export
capacity through Turkey may rise to as much as 15 billion cubic meters a year,
he said, without specifying by when.
Kurdish authorities are
in talks with a number of international oil companies for future energy
contracts, he said, without giving more details.
Iraq’s Kurdish area is
exporting 140,000 barrels of crude a day and will raise daily shipments to
200,000 barrels next year, Nechirvan Idris Barzani, the KRG prime minister,
said in a statement published by the official KRG website Sept. 20. Iraq holds
the fifth-biggest crude reserves, according to data from BP Plc (BP/) that
include Canadian oil sands.
source: Bloomberg
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