Four Months In, Iraq-Kurdish Oil Deal Near Collapse

Baghdad Stopped Making Payments Again

The largest source of tensions between Iraq’s central government and the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) for years has been oil revenue sharing. The deal cemented four months ago was supposed to end that, with clear obligations for both sides.

The KRG is now warning that the revenue sharing deal is near collapse, as the central government has once again stopped making payments of the $1 billion per month they are supposed to receive.

Iraqi officials claim they only paid a small fraction of what was promised because the volumes were lower than they expected. Kurdish officials say they’ve supplied 97% of the volume promised.

The fate of the oil already exported could be up in the air too, as legally, the indications are that the KRG still owns that exported oil, since Baghdad never paid for it. They’re probably not going to let the KRG sell it either, resuming a long-standing stalemate over the oil-rich Kurdish territory.

Author: Jason Ditz

Jason Ditz is Senior Editor for Antiwar.com. He has 20 years of experience in foreign policy research and his work has appeared in The American Conservative, Responsible Statecraft, Forbes, Toronto Star, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Providence Journal, Washington Times, and the Detroit Free Press.