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ERBIL, Kurdistan Region — The Kurdistan Region's parliament will convene on Wednesday to vote on the next Minister of Natural Resources, 19 months after the cabinet was formed, a parliamentary source has told Rudaw.
The Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) has nominated Dr Kamal Atroshi for the position, the KRG spokesperson announced on Sunday.
Atroshi was nominated by Prime Minister Masrour Barzani, Jotiar Adil said in a statement.
“It is our hope that the Kurdistan Parliament includes this topic in its next session and provides a vote of confidence,” the statement said.
Accoring to LinkedIn, Atroshi previously served as an Energy Advisor to PM Barzani in 2019, after decades working in oil and gas companies across Europe, the Middle East and North America, including in Kuwait and Canada.
He obtained his PhD in Geophysics in Exploration and Production from the University of Bordeaux in France, and worked as a researcher at the French Institute of Petroleum, according to the official.
The ministry has gone without a permanent minister for over a year. PM Barzani served as acting minister when his government came to power, following Ashti Hawrami, who had served as minister since 2006.
Atroshi’s nomination comes at a crucial time for the KRG, with a recent agreement made between Erbil and Baghdad to end oil disputes.
A KRG delegation led by Deputy PM Qubad Talabani went to Baghdad early last month amid rising tensions between the federal and regional governments over the Region’s budget share, which is dependent on KRG oil exports to Baghdad.
The KRG agreed to send over 250 thousand barrels of oil per day to the federal government as part of the 2021 Iraqi Budget bill, Talabani announced last week.
"If the budget is approved, we, as the KRG, are ready to deliver 250,000 barrels per day of Kurdistan Region oil through SOMO [State Organization of Marketing of Oil]," Talabani said following a four-hour parliament meeting, adding that the KRG has “always wanted to reach a comprehensive agreement with the federal government.”
The Kurdistan Region’s allocation of the federal budget has been a point of contention with Baghdad. Iraq has not sent the autonomous region money for several months of 2020 amid oil disputes, preventing the KRG from paying the salaries of its public servants.
The dispute between the two governments was further complicated on November 12 when Iraqi MPs passed the Fiscal Deficit Coverage Bill to approve loans for civil servant salaries in Iraq and the Kurdistan Region for the last two months of this year.
The bill passed with a majority vote, despite a walk-out staged by Kurdish MPs, who were angered that Erbil is obliged to hand over an unspecified amount of oil in exchange for funds- a clause they say was not in the original bill.
Additional reporting by Sangar Abdulrahman
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