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Iraqi Kurdistan PM Nechirvan Barzani says oil
contracts legal
15.10.2007
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October
15, 2007
Erbil-Hewler, Kurdistan region 'Iraq',
The government of Iraqi Kurdistan has reiterated
that the oil deals it has signed with foreign
companies this year are legal and said most of the
returns would be shared with the rest of Iraq.
Nechirvan Barzani, Prime Minister of the Kurdistan
Regional Government, told Al Jazeera that he had
waited a long time for Baghdad to pass a
long-awaited law organising the country's oil
sector, but the regional government decided to move
ahead with its own legislation following lengthy
delays.
"We waited a lot for Baghdad but there was a lot of
pressure on us and on me personally to pass a law
.... yet there was no response from Baghdad," he
said in an interview aired on Sunday.
"Everything was meant to come from Baghdad but by
May or June nothing had happened so we presented a
law and ... it was passed unanimously by the Kurdish
parliament."
Iraq's central government agreed on a draft oil law
early this year, under which control and revenue
from Iraq's oil reserves are to be shared among
Baghdad and Iraq's provinces, but the law has since
been stalled by political infighting. |
Nechirvan Barzani, Prime
Minister of
Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) |
The draft has yet to be approved by the national
parliament in Baghdad and Barzani said amendments
had since been made which the Kurds had not agreed
to, and it was not clear what the law in its current
form contained.
Frustrated by delays, the Kurdish Regional
Government approved its own oil law in August and
said last month it had signed a production-sharing
contract with a unit of U.S.-based Hunt Oil Co and
with Impulse Energy Corp. It has signed eight
contracts so far and expects to sign two more soon.
Barzani said the contracts were in line with Iraq's
constitution, which allows provinces substantial
control of natural resources, and with the
revenue-sharing provisions of the draft oil law.
"If we are convinced that the Iraqi constitution is
federal ... then what we did is according to the
constitution, no more no less," he said in an
interview that was dubbed into Arabic.
"Under these contracts, we get 17 percent of all
sales of oil produced from our land and the rest
will be distributed among all the other Iraqi
regions. So if we are sharing all this with Iraq and
not saying it is all ours, what is all the fuss
about? There are some who just want to keep
everything in Baghdad's control."
But Iraq's Oil Minister Hussain al-Shahristani has
repeatedly said the contracts were illegal and
complained about a lack of transparency by the
Kurdish authorities.
He said crude from the deals could not be legally
exported because the draft law states that only
Iraq's State Oil Marketing Organisation holds the
right to export oil.
Reuters
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