BAGHDAD: A territorial dispute in northern Iraq threatens to disrupt oil output at a field containing as much crude as Norway, even as U.S.-backed forces prepare what could be a decisive blow against ISIS militants in the nearby city of Mosul. Kirkuk, where Iraq first discovered oil in 1927, can produce more than 1 million barrels a day but is pumping at less than half its capacity while competing ethnic and political groups scramble to control its 9 billion barrels of reserves.
Lying near a disputed city of the same name, the Kirkuk field is a tinderbox for potential conflict between the central government and Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurds, both of whom have for decades claimed it as their own. More recently, it also became a flashpoint for rival Kurdish political parties and their heavily armed supporters. “As Islamic State becomes less of a pressing threat, a lot of these tensions that had been subsumed into the common fight are inevitably going to come back to the surface,” Energy Aspects Consultancy analyst Richard Mallinson said.
Iraq’s central government and the Kurdistan Regional Government both pump oil from different wells at the field, which straddles their respective areas of control. Kurdish forces took control of territory around Kirkuk in June 2014 after the Iraqi army fled from ISIS militants, but the federal government in Baghdad doesn’t recognize Kurdish control of the area. The Patriotic Union of Kurdistan party, which leads Kirkuk’s local government and maintains the city’s security, is a rival to the Kurdistan Democratic Party that dominates the KRG and controls most of its oil revenues.
Kirkuk and nearby fields are producing about half a million barrels of oil daily, according to data supplied by the Oil Ministry and the KRG in September 2016. Most of the crude is exported through a Kurdish-controlled pipeline to the Turkish port of Ceyhan. The KRG produces about 350,000 barrels a day, and the state-run North Oil Co. approximately 150,000. The two sides reached a deal in August 2016 allowing North Oil to export through the Kurdish pipeline. In return, the KRG takes a cut of the revenue and gets to export its own share of crude from Kirkuk. Iraq, the second-biggest OPEC member, pumped a total of 4.44 million barrels a day in February, data compiled by Bloomberg show. Oil prices fell more than 2 percent after the agreement as it was expected to increase exports by about 150,000 barrels.
