MESOP : A NEW OIL-STATE IN MIDDLE EAST IS BORN

Hawrami: We will export 1 million bpd of Kurd oil, including from Kirkuk

KT News – 26.6.2014 – Kurd oilSouth Kurdistan Natural Resources Minister Ashti Hawrami is talking about an 800 per cent increase in oil exports which will include oil pumped from the Kirkuk oil fields just recently secured by Kurdish peshmarga forces. “We expect to be able to export 1 million bpd by the end of next year, including crude from Kirkuk,” he told Reuters yesterday.

Hawrami said the revenue would be shared with the Iraqi central government, but added: “… pre-Mosul Iraq has gone and there is now a new reality … We will not be dictated to by some people in Baghdad who want to centralise power, to bully and intimidate. We need a real federal system based on power sharing and revenue sharing.”

He also stated: “We need to have an agreement with Baghdad. We’re not going to start exporting oil from Kirkuk unilaterally.”

Hawrami said Baghdad had previously agreed to a link between the Kirkuk oil fields and the new pipeline to Turkey recently completed by the KRG because Iraq’s own pipeline “has been sabotaged so many times” by insurgents.

“It is now in territory wholly controlled by insurgents, and even if they could get it back it would take 6-12 months to repair it as it has been so badly damaged,” he said.

Hawrami said Kurd exports could double “within a month or so” to around 250,000 bpd and reach 400,000 bpd by December.

“Oil companies and governments around the world are now showing increasing interest in buying our crude. Many have already done so,” he said.

Reuters correspondent David Sheppard noted that “about 20 Western energy executives were waiting to meet Hawrami” at his Erbil offices yesterday.