In a statement to the Iraqi News Agency (INA), Abdul-Ghani explained that until the actual costs of gas development activities from oilfields in the Kurdistan region of Iraq are reexamined, Iraqi Kurdistan will deliver at least 250,000 to 300,000 barrels of oil per day to be exported through the State Organization for Marketing of Oil (SOMO).

“In order to supply the required financial resources for the nation’s budget, we expect that oil prices, which now range between $70-80 per barrel, will either stay within these ranges or slightly rise, Abdul-Ghani added.

Last November, the Parliamentary Finance Committee and Abdul-Ghani discussed the latest agreements to resolve a dispute related to oil exports between the federal government in Baghdad and the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) as well as the main technical challenges to resume oil exports from Iraqi Kurdistan.

The meeting aimed to settle the conflict between Baghdad and Erbil, address unresolved issues in line with the Iraqi constitution, and advance a final agreement to resume oil exports from Iraqi Kurdistan via the Turkish port of Ceyhan.

The Iraqi cabinet decided earlier in November to immediately start delivering oil produced in the Kurdistan region of Iraq to SOMO or to the Oil Ministry in Baghdad.

The Iraqi Ministry of Finance will compensate the KRG for the production and transportation costs of the oil produced in northern Iraq and delivered to SOMO, or the Oil Ministry.

Before a final settlement takes place, the federal government’s finance ministry will pay $16 per barrel until a specialized technical consulting committee has finished calculating fair expenses.

The acting minister of natural resources in the KRG, Kamal Mohammed, said in July that Iraqi Kurdistan is waiting for Baghdad to agree with international oil firms to resume its oil exports.

Mohammed explained that the resumption of oil exports is related to the expense of oil production in the Kurdistan region of Iraq, Rudaw News reported.

Oil companies operating in the oil sector in Iraqi Kurdistan rejected Baghdad’s allocation of 8,960 dinars (about $6.9).

Talks to resume oil shipments have stumbled, and since March 2023, crude oil flows along the Iraq-Turkey oil pipeline, which formerly handled around 0.5 percent of the world’s oil supply, have been suspended due to legal and financial uncertainty.

One of the main sources of conflict between the federal government in Baghdad and the KRG is the distribution of oil revenues.

After the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) in Paris decided in March 2023 that Ankara had broken a 1973 treaty by enabling oil exports without the federal government’s approval, flows via the Iraq-Turkey oil pipeline stopped.