By Selen Tonkus
ANKARA
The oil deal between Erbil and Baghdad can become permanent only if it has the support of Turkey, experts say.
On Nov. 14, Baghdad agreed to give the semiautonomous Iraqi Kurdish Regional Government $500 million in exchange for providing the Iraqi central government with 150,000 barrels of crude oil per day.
Sardar Aziz, Senior Adviser to Natural Resources Committee of the Kurdish parliament, told The Anadolu Agency that the deal should not be seen as a completely positive development.
"The only news here is that the $500 million has arrived, and the Kurdish delegation will now go to Baghdad Sunday," he said, adding that he didn’t expect anything major to happen in the meeting.
Asked whether the payments for Kurdish oil sales would continue to be deposited with Halkbank, a Turkish lender, or would it be sent directly sent to Iraq, Sardar said if Turkey continued to mediate between Erbil and Baghdad, Halkbank would remain intact.
Rather than acting as a mediator, Turkey would only support a permanent solution, Iraqi energy expert Ali Semin said.
Semin, who works at an Istanbul-based think tank BILGESAM, said Turkey had now good links with the new government in Iraq.
He said that the Iraqi government led by Haider al-Abadi also needed good relations with Erbil and Turkey, especially since the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant terrorists wreaked havoc in Iraq, causing billions of dollars of losses.
Recalling that the Kirkuk-Ceyhan pipeline had been closed since March 2014 because of frequent terrorist attacks, Semin said: "Around 350 to 400 thousands of oil barrels of Kirkuk that belongs to the Iraqi central government remains inactive, as the pipeline is broken. This means $1.2 billion damage to the Iraqi economy."
When looked through Erbil's eyes, a permanent deal with Baghdad was also vital, Semin said. "Baghdad sent $500 million, but the monthly expenses of the Kurdish Regional Government are around $650 million. Erbil needs to reconcile with Baghdad."
About whether the 150,000 barrels of oil provided by the regional government to Baghdad belonged to the central government, the expert said: "Kurds produce around 120,000 barrels per day in Kirkuk from the fields they seized. The 150,000 barrels deal might be extracting from Kirkuk fields of Iraqi government."
On July 11, the Kurdish Regional Government said Kurdish forces had secured oil fields of Bai Hassan and the Makhmour area, after it learnt that Baghdad officials in the federal Ministry of Oil would allegedly sabotage the recent mutually-agreed pipeline infrastructure linking the Avana dome with the Khurmala field.
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