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Iraqi Kurdistan-Turkey oil pipeline could become
reality
26.9.2007
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September
26, 2007
Kirkuk, Iraq's border with Kurdistan region,
-- Iraqi authorities are considering the
construction of a pipeline connecting the oil fields
of Kirkuk, a contested area in Iraq's Kurdistan
region, to the seaports of southern Turkey,
Baghdad's deputy oil minister Mutasim Akram has
said.
The proposed pipeline would pass through Kurdistan's
provinces of Erbil and Duhok, Akram explained noting
how these areas were "outside the zones of high
tension where continuous acts of sabotage against
oil plants take place".
Akram made the announcement in an interview with the
Kurdish language daily, Rozmana.
If the proposal were to be approved by the central
government, then Baghdad would "need maximum
co-operation" from the Kurdistan regional
authorities based in Erbil, Akram said. |
Oil-rich fields in Kirkuk |
"The Turkish port of Jihan is the best maritime hub
for the export of Iraqi crude oil", said Akram while
lamenting the "terrorist attacks" in Iraq which
continued to prevent his country from achieving its
full oil export potential.
Akram said that crude oil would continue to be piped
to Iraq's southern port of Basra "where we expect an
improvement in the situation soon," he added.
Authorities in Kurdistan claim the Kurdish oil-rich
Kirkuk area as part of their autonomous region's
territory, but local Arab and Turkmen ethnic
minorities, supported by Turkey, dispute this.
Kirkuk city is a Kurdistani city and it lies just
south border of the Kurdistan autonomous region and
it is not under the full control of Kurdistan
Regional Government administration, its population
is a mix of majority Kurds and minority of Arabs,
Turkmen.
The former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein forced
over 250,000 Kurdish residents to give up their
homes to Arabs in the 1970s, to "Arabize" the city
and the region's oil industry.
Based on Iraq's Constitution a referendum is to be
held in late 2007 to decide whether the oil-rich
Kurdish province should be annexed to the safe
semiautonomous Kurdistan region in Iraq's north.
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