ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Oil exports from Iraq’s federal areas and the Kurdistan Region could reach 500,000 barrels per day if producers resume operations in the Region, a senior Iraqi official said on Saturday.
“The Kurdistan Region[‘s oil exports] do not exceed 30,000 currently, because the companies are not present [in the fields],” Basim Mohammed Khudair, the federal Oil Ministry's undersecretary for extraction affairs, told Rudaw’s Halkawt Aziz.
The Region’s oil exports were suspended in 2023 following a ruling by an arbitration court in Paris. The Kurdistan Region and the Iraqi government reached an agreement in September last year to resume exports through the federal government. However, drone and missile attacks on the Kurdistan Region during the US-Israel war with Iran, which began on February 28 and entered a ceasefire on April 8, forced some foreign companies to suspend operations.
The Iraqi official added that the federal government exports around 200,000 barrels of oil per day to Turkey through the Kurdistan Region’s pipeline, noting that this figure could more than double if oil companies resume operations in the Region.
“The companies there are not operating the oil fields.