(Adds minister quotes, details, background)
By Serena Chaudhry
BAGHDAD, April 2 (Reuters) – Iraq’s autonomous northern
Kurdish region will not resume oil exports until an agreement
has been reached with Baghdad on payments for oil companies
working in the area, Kurdish Energy Minister Ashti Hawrami said
on Monday.
The Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) stopped oil exports
on Sunday, accusing the central government of failing to pay
producers in the north, the latest clash in a long-running feud
over control of oil in the north.
“There is an agreement. You take and pay. They want to take
but not to pay. How can that be?” Hawrami said in a telephone
interview.
“Oil exports will not start again unless there is an
agreement on the payment policy,” he told Reuters.
The KRG warned last Monday it would stop oil exports – which
it had reduced to 50,000 barrels per day – because of a lack of
payments from Baghdad.
Tensions between the central government and the Kurdish
region rose last year when Hawrami announced an oil deal with
U.S. oil major Exxon Mobil.
Baghdad maintains that it alone has the right to export oil
while the KRG says it should have control of oil in its region.
Earlier on Monday, Iraq’s Oil Minister Abdul Kareem Luaibi
said Exxon had sent a second letter to the oil ministry
confirming its decision to freeze its oil deals with the Kurdish
autonomous region.
Hawrami challenged the existence of the letter and said the
KRG was in contact with Exxon on a daily basis.
“Exxon Mobil are maintaining their contract in Kurdistan,
nothing has changed … Exxon is active in Kurdistan,” he said,
adding that he expected new deals with oil majors within a month
or so.
(Reporting by Serena Chaudhry; Editing by Anthony Barker)
