No oil exports from Kurdistan before overdue payments solved -DNO
RoydadNaft – International oil companies operating in Iraq’s semi-autonomous region of Kurdistan will not produce oil for pipeline exports until the issue of overdue payments estimated at nearly $1 billion is resolved, Norway’s DNO said on Thursday.
Turkey’s closure of the Iraq-Turkey pipeline in March has collectively cost Iraq, Kurdistan’s Regional Government (KRG) and oil producers a total of $7 billion in lost export revenues, the Association of the Petroleum Industry of Kurdistan (APIKUR), has previously said.
The accumulated KRG debt to DNO for previous oil sales in 2022 and 2023 stood in excess of $300 million, the company said.
Other APIKUR members are Genel Energy, Gulf Keystone Petroleum, Shamaran Petroleum, HKN Energy Ltd, and Hunt Oil. Collectively they produce about 50% of the oil in Iraq’s Kurdistan.
Negotiations on the restart of flows are ongoing.
Iraqi government oil officials for the first time met with APIKUR representatives on Wednesday to discuss the resumption of flows to Turkey.
Its gross production in Kurdistan continued to rise in the fourth quarter from a daily average of 25,984 barrels of oil in the third quarter, it added.
Iraq, OPEC’s second-largest oil producer, exports about 85% of its crude via ports in the south. The northern route via Turkey accounts for about 0.5% of global oil supply.
