MESOP FLASH : Kurdish oil sales reach 6.5 million barrels, seventh tanker sailing: Yildiz

18-8-2014 – KURDPRESS – The amount of Iraqi Kurdish crude oil shipped to third countries via Turkey has reached 6.5 million barrels with the seventh tanker now sailing away, Turkish Energy Minister Taner Yıldız has said.

 “The seventh tanker has been loaded and its delivery has been completed,” the minister said, answering reporters’ questions after hosting Turkey’s Union of Marble, Natural Stıne and Machinery Manufacturers (TUMMER) in Ankara on Monday, Hurriyet daily said in a report. The minister has said a total of 7.8 million barrels of oil has been exported from Kurdish Regional Government (KRG). However, he said, the deliveries have been halted “due to some works being done regarding the piping systems.”

Around $350 million in oil sales have been completed or are under way from shipments sent via the KRG’s new pipeline to Turkey, a Reuters analysis of satellite tracking data shows. The first vessel of pipeline crude sailed in May. He re-asserted the income yielded from the Kurdish oil sales would be shared among the central Iraqi government in Baghdad and the Kurdish government in Erbil, in compliance with the Iraqi Constitution.The KRG oil cargoes are coming under greater scrutiny after Iraq won a U.S. court order 10 days ago to seize a 1 million-barrel shipment that arrived in the Gulf of Mexico. Several cargoes of Kurdish Shaikan crude have recently reached the United States, and Iraq’s central government has moved to block independent exports of crude by the KRG