Kurdish, Iraqi energy ministers pledge new era of cooperation

Western oil ministers and experts warn that a recent agreement between the Baghdad and Erbil governments to export 150,000 barrels of oil a day through Turkey is just a first step toward re-unifying Iraq and meeting global energy demand.
The Iraqi Minister of Oil Adel Abdel Mahdi (R) takes a tour a floating platform for oil tankers on September 21, 2014, offshore from the southern Iraqi port city of Al Faw, 90 kilometres south of Basra. An OPEC report on September 10, 2014 said that demand for oil would grow by 1.05 million barrels per day in 2014 to 91.2 million in 2015, trimming 50,000 barrels from the previous outlook. Demand in 2015 is expected to grow 1.19 million barrels per day, 20,000 barrels a day fewer than before, the cartel sa
Iraqi Minister of Oil Adel Abdel Mahdi (R) takes a tour a floating platform for oil tankers offshore from the southern Iraqi port city Al-Faw, Sept. 21, 2014. - AFP/Getty Images/Haidar Mohammed Ali
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Barbara Slavin
@BarbaraSlavin1

ISTANBUL — Iraq’s new oil minister, Adel Abdul Mahdi, conceded at an energy summit here on Nov. 19 that he inherited a depleted budget and that the central government now values an oil pipeline from the Kurdish area of Iraq to Turkey whose construction Baghdad once bitterly opposed.

Mahdi answered questions from Al-Monitor in a brief interview a day after Baghdad transferred $500 million to the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) in return for the KRG starting to pump 150,000 barrels a day of Kurdish oil into the Iraqi state petroleum company’s storage tanks at Ceyhan, Turkey.

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