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Iraqi Kurdistan govt KRG finds refined oil
alternative in Turkey
21.5.2012 |
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Kurdistan Regional Government Natural Resources
Minister Ashti Hawrami (R) shakes hands with
Turkey's Energy Minister Taner Yildiz during a joint
news conference in Kurdistan region capital, Erbil.
May 20,2012. Photo: Reuters
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May 21, 2012
ERBIL-Hewlêr, Kurdistan region 'Iraq', —
Resolving internal conflict over oil and gas
revenues is essential to creating a stable and
unified Iraq, Kurdistan’s energy minister, Dr. Ashti
Hawrami, told an industry conference in Erbil on
Sunday.
“If you implement the revenue sharing -- when
everybody feels he’s an Iraqi and getting part of
the wealth that he deserves -- that will unite Iraq;
that will create the new security for Iraq and
remove the tensions that everyone is scared of,”
Hawrami told reporters at the 1st International
Energy Arena – Erbil.
Without a resolution, Hawrami said, “I don’t know
what Iraq means. Iraq means fairness. Fairness means
revenue sharing, because that is what we have that
binds us, as Iraqis, together.”
The Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) is involved in
an ongoing dispute with the federal Iraqi government
in Baghdad over the country’s oil and gas revenue.
Hawrami and his Turkish counterpart Taner Yildiz
earlier announced a proposed joint venture between
the KRG and Turkey that would diminish the region’s
dependence on the federal government.
Without its own refineries, Kurdistan relies on
central Iraq to process the crude oil it produces.
Although Baghdad is supposed to deliver 140,000
barrels of refined crude each year,www.ekurd.net
the KRG says it has only received 35,000 barrels of
what it’s due.
Today’s proposed project will send tankers of
Kurdish crude oil to Turkey to be refined and
returned to Kurdistan.
Yildiz stressed that Turkey did not want to
interfere in Iraq’s internal disputes. “Any
investment in Northern Iraq,” he said, “will
contribute to the entirety of the country.”
Turkey, he added, is investing in Venezuela and
Colombia’s energy sector and “could not stay
indifferent to a region just a few hundred
kilometers from Turkey.”
The enhanced cooperation between the two neighbors,
Hawrami said, is about creating “a broader
infrastructure in the field of energy cooperation,
exporters monetizing our gas, which is idle rather
than burning, finding a better home for it, solving
problems with it, creating more capital for Iraq.”
By Hermione Gee
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