Iraqi Kurdistan said on Sunday that the semi-autonomous region planned to publish disputed oil deals it had made with foreign firms, a move that may help end an impasse with Baghdad over who will pay them. Kurdistan and Baghdad have been at loggerheads for months over oil deals Kurdistan signed independently with foreign firms.
The Arab-led government in Baghdad refuses to pay the firms, and oil exports from Kurdistan stopped last year. One problem is a lack of transparency in the deals, Baghdad lawmakers say, and the contracts' publication on the internet may help defuse the row. The Kurdish authorities have already sent copies of at least two contracts to Baghdad as both sides talk increasingly, ahead of a March 7 election, of an accord.
"The sooner we compile and scan them, they will be out," Kurdish natural resources minister Ashti Hawrami told Reuters in an interview on Sunday, referring to deals with some 38 firms currently working in Iraqi Kurdistan.
Small firms including Norway's DNO, Genel Enerji of Turkey and London-listed Heritage Oil have struck production sharing agreements in the largely autonomous northern Kurdish region. The central government in Baghdad prefers service contracts, for which developers receive a set fee for each barrel of oil produced.
Questions were raised about Kurdistan's agreements with foreign firms last year, when the Oslo bourse revealed details of a murky share deal between DNO and the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG). The KRG denied any wrongdoing.
Kurds want the central government to pay the oil companies working in Kurdistan, but Baghdad insists the KRG pay from its annual cut of the national budget.
KURD-ARAB THAW? Tensions between Kurds and the Arab-led government in Baghdad over contracts and larger issues about resources and land are seen as a major threat as Iraq emerges from years of sectarian war since the 2003 US invasion.
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