ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – The economic loss from a sabotaged pipeline exporting the Kurdistan Region’s crude oil through the Turkish port of Ceyhan is estimated at $14 million per day, a Kurdish minister said Tuesday. "Until now, the sabotaged pipeline has not been mended, which has been damaging the region’s economy by $14 million a day," Darbaz Kosrat Rasul , the Kurdistan Regional Government’s (KRG) minister of housing and reconstruction, told Rudaw. The Kirkuk-Ceyhan crude oil pipeline near the city of Urfa in southeastern Turkey was sabotaged on Feb. 16. The outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which has been under a fierce Turkish military assault since last summer, later claimed responsibility for the pipeline bombing. Rasul said the total loss from the damaged pipeline since it has been out of commission is estimated at $112 million. The loss to the Kurdish economy comes as Erbil faces a severe financial crisis, brought on Baghdad’s refusal to pay Erbil its share of the national budget, hosting nearly 2 million refugees from Syria and other parts of Iraq and a severe drop in international oil prices. Meanwhile Safeen Dzayee, the KRG’s spokesman, warned “there are still bombs around the pipeline and now Turkish authorities are working to defuse them." Kurdish Prime Minister Nechirvan Barzani said on Thursday that attacks on the region’s energy pipeline were unacceptable and Erbil’s deals with the outside world were a domestic affair.His comments came hours after the Group of Communities in Kurdistan (KCK), an organization affiliated with the PKK, declared it opposed Erbil’s gas exports to Turkey. “We do not tolerate their interference in our affairs,” the Kurdish prime minister told Rudaw. “It’s a domestic KRG affair.” The attacks “are not good for either of us,” he added. “It is a matter of people’s livelihood.”
