Kurdistan agrees to cut oil production: Iraqi Oil Minister
ERBIL, Kurdistan Region (Kurdistan24) – Most of the international oil companies working in Iraq, including those in the Kurdistan Region have agreed to decrease crude oil output as abidance to the OPEC agreement, said an Iraqi official on Thursday.
Iraq is fully committed to OPEC’s Nov. 30 accord to cut crude oil output, Bloomberg cited Iraqi Oil Minister Jabbar al-Luaibi on Thursday in Cairo during the meeting of the Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries, known as OAPEC.
“Kurdistan is within Iraq, and we are in agreement,” the Minister said.
Kurdistan Region exports over 600,000 oil barrels per day (obpd) abroad through the Turkish port of Ceyhan in the southeast of the country. The Region accounts for almost 12 percent of Iraq’s oil output.
On Nov. 30, OPEC decided to reduce oil production by 1.2 million obpd in an aim to boost oil prices following the dramatic drop in the past three years. The plan was expanded after 11 non-members including Kazakhstan and Russia joined the cuts on Dec. 10.
The oil-rich Iraq is the second-largest oil producer in OPEC following Saudi Arabia. As part of the accord, the country has pledged to cut its output by 4.5 percent of its total production which is equal to 210,000 obpd.
Luaibi also mentioned that the country is in talk with the Egyptian government to ship them with its crude oil after Saudi Arabia halted oil shipments to Egypt in October.
The relations between the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) and the federal government of Iraq have been tensioned since the beginning of 2014 after Baghdad blockaded the federal budget share of the Kurdistan Region, accused the KRG of seeking to sell its oil independently.
Iraq is currently suffering from economic, political, and security turmoil. The country’s forces have already launched a military operation to liberate Mosul, the second-largest city in Iraq that has been fallen into the hand of the Islamic State (IS) since June 2014.
Editing by Ava Homa