Baghdad Agrees To Ship Kirkuk Oil To Iran

Baghdad Agrees To Ship Kirkuk Oil To Iran
Sat Nov 11, 2017 10:43:12

Tehran and Baghdad have reached an agreement on a plan to export oil from Kirkuk in northern Iraq to Iran, according to a new announcement by Iraqi Oil Minister Jabar al-Luiebi.

Iran is set to receive 30,000-60,000 barrels per day of oil under the agreement, though that amount could increase, the minister said. The crude will reach its final destination in the Kermanshah province aboard tankers until a completed pipeline can make the transfer more efficiently. There, a local refinery will process the oil.

The final version of the agreement has yet to be signed, but Luiebi added that the formality would be completed in the near future, once technical issues had been sorted out.

This announcement comes just over a month after the Kurdish referendum, which resulted in a near-unanimous vote for the Kurdistan Regional Government to secede from Iraq. Baghdad has not accepted the results of the vote, moving instead to deploy its military to secure control of the Kirkuk oilfields, which, though located in northern Iraq, do not lie in areas legally allotted to the KRG.

Both Iran and Turkey have significant Kurdish minorities.

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