MP: Kurdistan gas pipeline to Turkey at final stages

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region (Kurdistan 24) – The Kurdistan Region-Turkey pipeline to export the Region’s natural gas to the international market is in final stages, said a Kurdish Parliamentarian on Wednesday.

Heva Haji Mirkhan, a Kurdish MP in the Economic and Finance Committee in the Kurdistan Parliament told Kurdistan 24 that the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) makes all efforts to increase revenue and improve the economy.

Mirkhan added that the KRG gas pipeline to Turley’s Ceyhan Port is at its final stages, stating that with its completion, the economy would get stronger.

The Kurdistan Region has a reserve of 200 trillion cubic meters of natural gas which makes three percent of the world’s reserve.

With increased revenues, the government can pay the delayed salaries of the civil servants, Mirkhan said.

“A committee has been formed to review the government employees’ salaries and increase them based on the KRG’s revenues,” she concluded.

Iraq's former Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki cut the constitutional share of the Kurdistan Region in the federal budget in early 2014, since then, the KRG has started to independently export and sell oil through Turkey.

The KRG is entitled to seventeen percent of Iraq’s total national budget but Baghdad’s refusal to pay this amount imposed major financial issues in the Kurdistan Region.

The war against the Islamic State and the large number of Syrian refugees and displaced Iraqis are some of the major financial issues the KRG faces.

The Kurdistan Region has billions of proven oil reserves that export 600,000 oil barrels per day to Turkey’s Ceyhan port which is then transferred to the international oil markets.

The federal government of Iraq has frequently threatened to sue the buyers of Kurdistan’s crude oil.

Despite this, the KRG continues to export its oil abroad, claiming it is the constitutional right of the autonomous Region to administrate its resources, especially after the budget cut.

The revenue of the Kurdistan Region mostly relies on the export of crude oil.