Amid the ongoing struggle over oil control between the Iraqi Kurds and the Iraqi central government in Baghdad, the Iraqi central authorities have halted exports of oil from Kirkuk via the state’s marketing authority, SOMO—agreeing to let the oil all go to the Kurds. Crude exports had only been resumed in September after the two sides reached a revenue-sharing agreement to jointly export crude from the giant Kirkuk field, with the intention of splitting the oil between Baghdad and Erbil. Instead, the oil produced in Kirkuk will now be transferred to refineries in Kurdistan, according to Kurdish news agencies. The export and sale of oil produced in Kirkuk has been a complicated issue between Baghdad and the Iraqi Kurds. This oil is produced by the Iraqi federal government in northern Iraq, but exported via a pipeline system owned by the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG). At the height of the […]