Reached late last year, the new Iraq-Kurdistan oil revenue sharing deal was supposed to be the centerpiece of a new rapprochement between the autonomous region and the central government, and new unity in the country. That deal is already in jeopardy, however, over disputes on revenue sharing.
The Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) has been complaining for months that Iraq was paying them their due share of the exported oil from their region, with particular dispute over oil from the region around Kirkuk, which is under de facto KRG control but not recognized as part of their region by the central government.
Now, oil exports to Turkey have ground to a halt, a move some officials attributed to the dispute. Officially, however, the KRG has denied anything of the sort was happening, and attributed the halt in shipments to a temporary bottleneck.
This comes, however, amid growing KRG complaints about the central government leaving them to do everything in the ISIS war in the far north, and with many top Kurdish leaders openly advocating secession in the long run, the potential collapse of the oil deal could have a major impact on the country’s composition.