Kurds Don't Hold all the Cards in Iraqi Oil Battle

Kurds Don't Hold all the Cards in Iraqi Oil Battle

by corporate@oilprice.com (Jen Alic)

The battle between the Iraqi central government in Baghdad and the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) in northern Iraq is picking up dangerous momentum as Baghdad attempts to fight back against brazen moves by major oil companies to deal directly with the Kurds for Iraqi oil deals.Following on the heels of a controversial ExxonMobil deal with the KRG last October and then Chevron earlier this year, France’s Total and Russian Gazprom’s Neft have now struck similar deals, leaving Baghdad wrong-footed and threatening to Balkanize the…Read more...

Iraq's Kurdish Region Pulling Away from Baghdad Control

by admin@namecake.com (John Daly)

To paraphrase Apollo 13, “Baghdad, we have a problem.” Iraq’s Kurdistan Regional Government's (KRG) is increasingly signing unilateral oil deals with international oil giants, bypassing Baghdad. Iraq’s central government is insisting that all such regional deals first be cleared by the Iraqi government, but the oil majors have apparently concluded that such diplomatic niceties are largely irrelevant in their search for profits, and are now cutting deals directly with the KRG in Iraqi Kurdistan’s capital Erbil. The…Read more...

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