人民网
Tue,Dec 2,2014
English>>World

Editor's Pick

Iraqi gov't reaches deal with Kurds over budget dispute

(Xinhua)    20:19, December 02, 2014
Email|Print|Comments       twitter     facebook     Sina Microblog     reddit    

BAGHDAD, Dec. 2 -- The Iraqi government has reached an agreement with the semi-autonomous region of Kurdistan over oil exports and budget payments, an official Iraqi TV channel reported on Tuesday.

"The delegations of Baghdad and Arbil governments agreed that the Kurdish region exports 250,000 crude oil barrels per day (bpd) from Kurdistan oil fields and 300,000 bpd from Iraq's Kirkuk oil fields under the control of the State Organization for Marketing of Oil via Turkey's port of Ceyhan on the Mediterranean Sea," the state-run Iraqiya channel said.

In return, the deal stated that the federal government will pay 17 percent of the national budget to the Kurdish regional government, the report said.

The deal came after a Kurdish delegation, headed by Nechirvan Barzani, prime minister of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), arrived in Baghdad on Sunday to meet with officials of the central government, including Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi.

On Nov. 13, Iraqi Minister of Oil Adel Abdul Mahdi, a Shiite, and the KRG reached a preliminary agreement to ease the tensions between the governments of Baghdad and Kurdistan.

Under the preliminary deal, the regional authority started on Nov. 18 to pump 150,000 barrels a day of crude oil to the federal oil tanks in the Turkish port of Ceyhan. The federal government transferred some 500 million U.S. dollars to the KRG a day later.

Baghdad has long been opposing the Kurdish region's independent export of oil, while Kurdish leaders have sharply criticized Baghdad for suspending the annual budget payments to the region.

The oil deal is seen as an important achievement for Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi and his government. Both Baghdad and the Kurdish region have been fighting the Islamic State extremist group which has seized large areas in the country since June.

(For the latest China news, please follow @PDChina on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/PDChina and @PeoplesDaily on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/PeoplesDaily)

(Editor:Wang Ao、Gao Yinan)
Email|Print|Comments       twitter     facebook     Sina Microblog     reddit    

Related reading

We Recommend

Most Viewed

Day|Week|Month

Key Words

Links