Kurdish Regional Government
(KRG) officials declared that the oil deal signed between the central
government in Baghdad and Iran without the consultation of the KRG is
unconstitutional and would not be successful, Kirkuk officials said on
Thursday.
Following the meeting of
Iranian Oil Minister Bijan Namdar Zangeneh and Iraq's oil minister Jabar Ali
al-Luaibi on July 30 in Tehran, Zangeneh said that a pipeline to ship Kirkuk
oil to Iran would be built, further enhancing Iran and Iraq's bilateral
relations.
Iraq and Iran signed an
agreement to export the oil that is produced from the wells in Kirkuk in
February 2017. Among those wells, the KRG controls five while three others are
under the control of the Iraqi state-owned North Oil Company.
The oil-rich Kirkuk region
is a point of contention between Baghdad and the KRG in terms of shares over
revenues gained via oil exports.
The Kurdish parliament’s
Natural Resources Commission deputy president Dilshad Saban said that the deal
has more of a "political" angle than an "economic" one.
According to Saban, this
decision is part of an aim to manipulate the planned referendum in Kirkuk on
Sept. 25 when participants will vote on whether the northern Kurdish region
should formally secede from the Iraqi state. He also considers that both sides
are not in a position to put the agreement in place.
The Kirkuk Provincial
Council Chairman Rebwar Talabani, who spoke to the KRG's local media, also said
that the oil deal conflicts with the constitution.
Underlining Article 112 of
the constitution, Talabani argued that any agreement over oil production,
processing or exports from any province in the country has to be made through
consultation.
Kirkuk governor Najmiddin
Karim, in a written statement, reacted to the deal between the sides, stating
that the agreement was reached without the consultation of the KRG, and
therefore would be unsuccessful.
The Kirkuk provincial
administration supports all oil agreements that are reached by the central
government, especially in efforts to increase production capacity through
greater recovery of wells, Karim noted.
However, any deal reached
or any meeting held on oil production without the consultation of the Kirkuk
administration and provincial council cannot be successful, he declared.
During the U.S.-led
invasion of Iraq in 2003, Kurdish Peshmerga forces seized Kirkuk, prompting an
influx of Kurds into the ethnically diverse city.
While Baghdad says Kirkuk
is administratively dependent on Iraq’s central government, the Patriotic Union
of Kurdistan -- an influential political party in the region -- wants to see
the city incorporated into the semi-autonomous Kurdish region.
Kirkuk’s population is
comprised mainly of Arab, Turkmen and Kurdish inhabitants.
(Anadolu Agency)