“The Kurdistan Region will continue its oil exports as before and has not decided to abide by the OPEC accord to reduce the exportation of oil,” Dilshad Shaaban, deputy head of the energy and natural resources committee in the Kurdistan Parliament, told Rudaw on Monday.
His remark comes as Iraq’s Oil Minister Jabbar al-Luaibi had claimed at a meeting in Egypt that the majority of international oil companies alongside the Kurdistan Region would commit to reduce oil exports in order to fulfill the OPEC accord.
“Kurdistan is within Iraq and we are in agreement,” Bloomberg quoted al-Luaibi, as saying at a meeting of the Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries, known as OAPEC.
Shaaban added that the Kurdistan Region is not a member of OPEC and currently has no oil deal with Baghdad to force it to abide by the agreement.
He explained that “there is only one way through which the KRG will commit to reduce its oil exports in case of it reaches an oil accord with Baghdad. But it is unlikely to happen.”
According to the November oil production and export report from the KRG, the region has exported an average of 587,646 barrels of oil per day.
OPEC member states agreed on November 30 to reduce production by 1.2 million barrels a day in an effort to lift the price.
Iraq, OPEC’s second-biggest producer, pledged to reduce output by 210,000 barrels per day, or 4.5 percent of its total production.
