Above photo: Ahmad Al-Rubaye/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images.
Washington is trying to block Iranian oil exports as part of a ‘maximum pressure’ campaign.
And wants Kurdish oil to offset the losses.
Officials in the government of US President Donald Trump say Iraq must allow Kurdish oil exports to restart or face sanctions alongside Iran, Reuters reported on 21 February, citing eight sources with direct knowledge of the matter.
Washington wants oil exports from Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdistan region to resume to offset a potential fall in Iranian oil exports. President Trump has pledged to cut oil exports from Iran to zero as part of a new “maximum pressure” campaign against the Islamic Republic.
On Monday, Iraq’s oil minister made a surprise announcement saying exports from Iraqi Kurdistan would resume next week.
Exports of 300,000 barrels per day from the Iraqi Kurdistan region to Turkiye were halted two years ago after an international court in Paris ruled that they violated an oil pipeline agreement between the Iraqi and Turkish governments dating to the 1970s.
Reuters cites sources in Baghdad, Washington, and Erbil, the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan, as saying that mounting pressure from the White House was a key driver behind Monday’s announcement.
Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani is also being pressured by President Trump to sever economic and military ties with Iran, Reuters noted. Last week, Iraq’s central bank blocked five more private banks from accessing the US dollar at the request of the US Treasury.
The announcement comes as Kurds in Syria are under pressure to reach a deal with the new government in Damascus, led by former Al-Qaeda leader Ahmad al-Sharaa, to give up their weapons and dissolve their forces. The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) occupy large swathes of north and east Syria, including the country’s major oil fields, in partnership with US forces.
Exports of Iraqi Kurdish oil began in 2014 after leaders of the Iraqi Kurdistan region cut a deal with ISIS, allowing the extremist group to take Mosul, Sinjar, and other territories in exchange for allowing Kurdish Peshmerga forces to take the disputed city of Kirkuk.
Kurdish leaders wished to control Kirkuk’s massive oil reserves to provide a revenue base to support the independent Kurdish state they hoped to establish.
The Kirkuk-Ceyhan pipeline ran through territory conquered by ISIS, but Kurdish leaders had begun building a separate pipeline from Kirkuk to Turkiye via the Fishkhabour crossing in 2013.
After taking Kirkuk, the Kurdish region began illegally exporting oil via the newly built pipeline to Turkiye. The majority of this oil was sold to Israel, a backer of Kurdish independence. By 2015, Kurdish crude accounted for 77 percent of Israeli oil imports.