Baghdad says still opposes KRG oil pipeline

Iraq PM Maliki and Iraq Deputy Prime Minister for Energy Hussain al-Shahristani

REUTERS   Ahmed Rasheed and Peg Mackey

Baghdad said it is still firmly opposed to Iraqi Kurdistan's plan for an independent oil pipeline through Turkey, insisting that only the central government has the right to export crude.

Iraq's deputy prime minister for energy, Hussain al-Shahristani, told Reuters he had conveyed Baghdad's views to Turkish Energy Minister Taner Yildiz.

"Turkey is aware of Iraq's concern and total rejection of that (KRG pipeline) plan. We have reminded Turkey that this is in breach of the agreement between the two countries that regulates exports from Iraq through the Turkish pipeline," al-Shahristani told Reuters.

"Turkey assured us they respect that agreement and they will not allow any export of Iraqi crude without the permission of the federal government in

Iraq, Kurds, Turks and oil: A tortuous triangle

The Economist

The governments of Turkey, Iraq and Iraqi Kurdistan play a dangerous game

SNAKING their way from Kirkuk, a city 240 kilometres (150 miles) north of Baghdad, through Kurdistan and across Turkey’s eastern region of Anatolia to the Mediterranean are pipes that once carried 1.6m barrels a day (b/d) of Iraqi oil to the global market and yielded fat transit fees to Turkey along the way. The infrastructure underpinned the two countries’ mutual dependence. But nowadays the balance of power has shifted. A third party, the Iraqi Kurds, has changed it. It is unclear who will emerge on top. But Iraq’s central government in Baghdad is on the defensive.

Wars, saboteurs and, since the 1990s, economic sanctions have left the Iraqi sections of the pipeline system in a mess. Barely a fraction of its capacity is used. One of the two parallel lines stands empty and the source that once fed them, the giant Kirkuk oilfield, is dilapidated. The oil ministry in Baghdad has vague ideas about revamping the pipeline, perhaps to carry crude extracted near Basra, in the far south, though this would need an expensive new pipeline to link both ends of the country.

But Turkey is hatching a different plan for its section of the Kirkuk-to-Ceyhan pipeline. Its souring relations with the government in Baghdad have spurred it to cultivate new ties with the Iraqi Kurds’ regional government in Erbil, which oversees the oil and gas that Turkey’s growing economy craves. A wide-ranging energy deal is in the works that will see state-backed Turkish firms and Western oil majors plough money into Kurdish infrastructure and oilfields, connecting them to Turkey and the world beyond. The deal could eventually allow for up to 2m b/d of Kurdish oil exports to go through Turkey.

Last year, trade between Turkey and Iraqi Kurdistan amounted to $8 billion. Turkish money has paid for pristine airports in Erbil and Dohuk, an Iraqi Kurdish city further north, and for other large projects. Not long ago, Turkish politicians, wary of their own large and restless Kurdish minority still fighting for autonomy (or more) in eastern Turkey, barely acknowledged Iraq’s autonomous Kurdish region.

Turkey weighs pivotal oil deal with Iraqi Kurdistan

Ben Ven Heuvelen     The Washington Post

ANKARA, Turkey — American diplomats are struggling to prevent a seismic shift in Turkey’s policy toward Iraq, a change that U.S. officials fear could split the foundations of that fractious state.

The most volatile fault line in Iraq divides the semiautonomous Kurdistan region in the north from the Arab-majority central government in Baghdad. As the two sides fight for power over territory and oil rights, Turkey is increasingly siding with the Kurds.

Kurdish and Turkish leaders have had a budding courtship for five years. But now Turkey is negotiating a massive deal in which a new Turkish company, backed by the government, is proposing to drill for oil and gas in Iraq’s Kurdish region and build pipelines to transport those resources to international markets. The negotiations were confirmed by four senior Turkish officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of political sensitivities.

“Turkey hasn’t needed to ask what we think of this, because we tell them at every turn,” said a senior U.S. official involved in Middle East policymaking, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk with the media. The official said that any bilateral energy deals with the Kurdistan region would “threaten the unity of Iraq and push [Prime Minister Nouri] al-Maliki closer to Iran.”

Turkey seeks to continue political, economic role in Iraq

 

Barçın YİNANÇ       Hürriyet Daily News 

As Ankara readies to work with the Iraqi administration it tried to have unseated in the last election, officials have expressed confidence that Turkey will continue to play a role in Iraq, politically and economically.
“Iraq cannot afford to turn its back on Turkey,” one diplomat familiar with Iraqi affairs told the Hürriyet Daily News & Economic Review.

Turkey’s efforts to replace Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s administration, based on a Shiite-Kurdish coalition, with a Sunni-backed one in the March elections constituted a perhaps-unprecedented level of involvement for Ankara in a neighboring country’s domestic affairs.

Dissatisfied with al-Maliki’s tendency toward “one-man rule,” as disclosed in confidential U.S. diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks, Ankara pushed for a government led by former Prime Minister Ayad Allawi’s Sunni-backed al-Iraqiyya bloc. Turkish Foreign Ministry Undersecretary Feridun Sinirlioğlu is quoted as saying in one cable that al-Maliki is “getting out of control.” Officials, however, do not expect Turkey to face any negative consequences from its involvement in Iraq’s elections.

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