The two sides reached an accord that is expected to lead to the restart of oil flows through a Kurdish pipeline to Turkey, which has been shut down since last summer. “It was agreed with the Kurdish side to start exporting oil from Kirkuk,” Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said on Tuesday. The standoff has been intractable for quite a while. Baghdad demands that oil exported to Turkey – and on to the global market via the Turkish Mediterranean port in Ceyhan – do so under the auspices of the Iraqi government. After an Iraqi oil pipeline to Turkey was damaged years ago by ISIS, however, the Kurds built their own pipeline and exported oil on their own. The dispute between the Kurds and the Iraqi government reached a climax last year when Kurdistan declared independence in September, a move that was quickly followed by an incursion by Iraqi troops […]