JINSA CEO Quoted in the New York Times
Oil Gives Kurds a Path to Independence, and Conflict With Baghdad
By Azam Ahmed and Clifford Krauss
Roughly two dozen huge oil tankers are idly turning figure eights around the Mediterranean or on the high seas, loaded with oil pumped from wells in Iraqi Kurdistan but with nowhere to legally offload it.
The oil fleet is a costly gamble, to the tune of millions in fees each month, by Kurdish officials who are desperately trying to sell the oil abroad, even as the Iraqi government and the United States are blocking their attempts.
Oil Gives Kurds a Path to Independence, and Conflict With Baghdad
By Azam Ahmed and Clifford Krauss
Roughly two dozen huge oil tankers are idly turning figure eights around the Mediterranean or on the high seas, loaded with oil pumped from wells in Iraqi Kurdistan but with nowhere to legally offload it.
The oil fleet is a costly gamble, to the tune of millions in fees each month, by Kurdish officials who are desperately trying to sell the oil abroad, even as the Iraqi government and the United States are blocking their attempts.
To Iraqi officials, the tankers are carrying contraband – oil that by law should be marketed only by the Iraqi Oil Ministry, with the profits split: 83 percent for the Baghdad government, 17 percent for the Kurdish autonomous government in the north.
Fearing that Iraqi Kurdistan will use oil profits to fuel a bid for independence, the Iraqi government has threatened to sue any country or company that buys Kurdish oil, and has cut off national funding for the Kurdish region.
The Kurds have kept pumping oil anyway, betting that their American allies, who have pressured them to abide by the Iraqi oil law, will soften their stance, and that buyers will come forward. But as oil prices have plummeted, and as Iraq and the United States have refused to budge, the odds are getting longer by the day.
For now, Kurdish officials are sticking to a long-term view of the confrontation, despite its high cost at a time when the government is all but broke. They believe that, eventually, the oil glut this fall will end, and that international buyers will need Kurdish crude and support their nationalist aspirations.