By Ahmed Rasheed and Rowena Edwards
March 25 (Reuters) – Iraq halted exports of 450,000 barrels per day (bpd) of oil from the semi-autonomous Kurdistan region and fields north of Kirkuk on Saturday, an industry official told Reuters, after the country won a lengthy arbitration case against Turkey.
In a case dating back to 2014, Iraq alleged that Turkey violated a joint agreement by allowing the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) to export oil through a pipeline to the Turkish port of Ceyhan. Baghdad considers KRG exports illegal.
“Iraq was officially informed on Thursday of the final decision of the International Court of Arbitration, favorable to Iraq,” an official from the Oil Ministry said.
Turkey informed Iraq that it will abide by the arbitral award, according to a source.
Turkish shipping officials told Iraqi employees at the Ceyhan export center that no ships would be allowed to load Kurdish crude without Iraqi government approval, according to a document seen by Reuters.
Turkey subsequently halted the extraction of Iraqi crude from the pipeline leading to Ceyhan, according to another document seen by Reuters.
Iraq on Saturday stopped pumping oil through its part of the pipeline from its northern Kirkuk oil fields, one of the officials told Reuters.
Iraq had been pumping 370,000 bpd of KRG crude and 75,000 bpd of federal crude through the pipeline before it was halted, according to a source familiar with pipeline operations. “A delegation from the Oil Ministry will travel to Turkey shortly to meet with energy officials and agree on a new mechanism to export crude from northern Iraq in accordance with the arbitration award,” a second Oil Ministry official said.
(Reporting by Ahmed Rasheed in Baghdad and Rowena Edwards in London. Editing in Spanish by Javier Leira)
Source: Ambito
