Iraqi Kurds ship 13.7m barrels of oil since May; earn $1.3bn
ISTANBUL, September 28, 2014
Iraqi Kurdistan has shipped a total of nineteen tankers carrying 13.7 million barrels of crude oil since May via a pipeline to Turkey's Mediterranean port of Ceyhan, a Turkish energy official told Reuters.
"The flow of Kurdish oil continues without any issues. The 20th tanker will be loaded in the coming days," the official said, adding that the storage tanks in Ceyhan currently held 445,000 barrels of oil.
Turkey's state-run lender Halkbank, where buyers of the Kurdish oil make their payments to, holds $400 million for the sold oil, Turkish Energy Minister Taner Yildiz told reporters.
"This is a business in which so far $1.3 billion worth of revenues have been made," Yildiz added.
The Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) began exporting oil in May via its independent pipeline, linking up with the existing Iraq-Turkey pipeline on the Turkish side of the border.
Baghdad strongly rejects the KRG's independent oil exports through Turkey and has launched a series of legal cases to try to halt the sales.
The Kurds argue they hold the right to sell oil under Iraq's constitution. -- Reuters
