ERBIL — Nechirvan Barzani, prime minister of  the Kurdistan Regional Government of Iraq,  is criticizing Baghdad for threatening to cancel the contracts of companies operating in the country’s southern oil fields if they refuse to stop dealing separately with the Kurds.

“Instead of warning companies to choose between the KRG or Baghdad, it’s in Iraq’s interest to cooperate more and  ...  for the KRG and Baghdad to sit down and find a solution,” Barzani told Al-Monitor in an exclusive interview.

His comments are likely to add fuel to the dispute simmering between the KRG and the central government in Baghdad, which argues that the semiautonomous Kurdistan Region has no legal authority to export oil or sign agreements for development. The Kurds, however, maintain that Iraq’s constitution gives them the right to do so. They have already signed contracts with a number of multinational companies, including Chevron, ExxonMobil, and Gazprom. In January, Iraqi Oil Minister Abdul Kareem Luaibi ordered ExxonMobil to decide between Kurdistan and southern Iraq.

“This approach for Baghdad to tell ExxonMobil to choose between Kurdistan and Iraq, in our view, is a very wrong approach, because... that oil belongs to all of Iraq,” Barzani said. “Those companies that now deal with the KRG are aware of our right in the Iraqi constitution. That’s why they came to the KRG.”