ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Oil exports from the Kurdistan Region have dropped to less than 10 percent of their pre-war levels, the top executive at Iraq's national marketer told Rudaw on Tuesday, amid regional tensions that have disrupted the work of foreign energy companies operating in the region.
"Oil exports from the Kurdistan Region to the port of Ceyhan [in Turkey] have declined from 240,000 to about 20,000 barrels per day (bpd)," Ali Nazar al-Shatari, general director at the State Organization for Marketing of Oil (SOMO), told Rudaw's Malik Mohammed.
He attributed the decline to "the continuous attacks on oil and gas fields and the withdrawal or suspension of operations by foreign companies."
Energy firms operating in the Kurdistan Region have faced repeated disruptions since the eruption of the Iran war in late February, when the US and Israel launched a joint aerial campaign striking thousands of targets across the country.
In response, Tehran has carried out thousands of drone and missile strikes across the Middle East, targeting alleged US assets - particularly in Gulf Arab states - as well as launching retaliatory attacks against Israel.
The Iranian response has also involved Iraqi armed groups aligned with the Tehran-led ‘Axis of Resistance,’ with several factions claiming responsibility for attacks on purported US assets in Iraq, including energy infrastructure in the Kurdistan Region, forcing several firms to suspend or scale down operations.
As a result, companies have sought firm assurances from both the federal government in Baghdad and the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) in Erbil that such incidents will not recur before resuming operations.
"The safety and security of the energy firms’ staff comes above any production considerations," Shatri said.
Moreover, SOMO's director-general commented on the agreement Iraq and Turkey signed Saturday, which came a day after the expiration of a 1973 pipeline accord between the two countries.
"We signed a one-year agreement, under which we must export at least 750,000 barrels through the Silopi-Ceyhan pipeline," the company director said, noting the agreement grants Turkey the right to "use the remaining capacity of the pipeline to meet its own needs" during this period.
Iraqi Oil Minister Basim Mohammed Khudair said Monday that the agreement with Turkey seeks "to ensure the continuity of crude oil exports from the Kurdistan Region's fields, alongside an ambitious plan to route part of the southern oil through the pipeline to achieve export volumes exceeding 700,000 bpd."
The Strait of Hormuz, a vital waterway through which around one-fifth of global energy supplies pass, has been a contentious point between the US and Iran since the onset of the six-week war, with Tehran claiming sovereignty over Hormuz and requiring vessels to obtain authorization for passage, while Washington has imposed a naval blockade on Iranian ports.
For Iraq, the regional war and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz dealt a major blow to the country's oil sector and broader economy, with Iraqi crude production falling from about 4.14 million bpd before the crisis to 1.49 million bpd at the height of the blockade.
In the wake of the regional escalation, Iraq has sought alternative routes to export its oil, primarily through overland oil tankers to Syria and through its pipelines to Turkey's Ceyhan port.
