Erbil Says No Breakthrough in Energy, Budget Talks with Iraqi Team

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - An Iraqi delegation that arrived in Erbil on Monday to resolve budget and energy disputes with the Kurdish government has returned to Baghdad without reaching any agreement.

“The Iraqi delegation had brought with them their suggestions and ideas about the issue of the budget and we gave them our own suggestions to take back to the Iraqi government,” Kurdistan President’s Chief of Staff Fuad Hussein told Rudaw.

The Iraqi team was headed by Qusay Suhail, deputy speaker of parliament, Fuaf Masoum, head of the Kurdistani bloc in Iraqi parliament and Adnan Janabi on behalf of Iraq’s Sunnis.

Hussein said that the delegation was in Erbil to discuss the issue of Kurdistan’s oil and gas exports and Erbil’s share of the federal budget.

Hussein, who met with the delegation, said that its members had met with Iraq’s deputy prime minister for energy affairs Hussein Shahristani and Oil Minister Abdelkarim al-Luaibi in Baghdad.

He maintained that the main point of discussion between the Iraqi delegation and Kurdish officials was Baghdad’s expectations of Kurdistan’s oil export capacity.

“In the meeting we told them to write in the budget law that Iraq can export 3.4 million barrels of oil per day, instead of writing Iraq can export 3.4 million barrels, 400,000 barrels of which must be exported by the Kurdistan Region,” said Hussein.

He added that “Kurdistan” should not be mentioned in the draft of the budget law and that “it should be written that Iraq would export that amount.”

The president’s chief of staff also said that the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) had asked the Iraqi delegation to “amend the penalties inserted in Iraq’s budget law against the Kurdistan Region so that the Kurds will vote for the 2014 budget in parliament which hasn’t been approved yet.”

Disagreements between Erbil and Baghdad over the autonomous region’s oil and gas exports reached their height recently when Baghdad cut off Kurdistan from the national budget.

The region sits on billions of barrels of oil and natural gas, and local authorities have invited foreign companies and laid pipelines to export oil to the world market. However, Baghdad demands a direct role in the exports, and pressures the Kurds to meet a daily goal of close to a half-million barrels a day.