The Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) has issued an official statement regarding the case of the region's oil and gas activities and a recent ruling by an Iraqi federal court declaring the activities illegal.

The statement has referred to the Supreme Judicial Council of the Kurdistan Region in a statement issued on May 30, about the oil and gas law and the administration of oil and gas in the region, stressing that the Iraqi federal court rule was illegal and the court did not have the power to repeal the KRG law, and that the KRG's performance in oil activities was in line with the 2005 Iraqi constitution.

The KRG statement has added the region's oil and gas activities were not in contradiction with the Iraqi constitution, and the Kurdistan Region Oil and Gas Law, which was approved by the Kurdistan Parliament in 2007, adding that the Article 110 of the constitution about the discovery, extraction and export of oil and gas has not given exclusive authority to the Iraqi central government in this regard, and therefore the current oil and gas laws have legal validity.

In addition, according to Article 112 of the Iraqi Constitution, the federal government manages the current oil fields jointly with the oil-rich region and Iraq provinces, and the distribution of revenues from the sale of oil and gas must be distributed fairly among the residents of this country and the areas and specially for the provinces and areas that had been damaged and deprived of the policies of the former Iraqi regime.

It was also announced that Article 112 of the Iraqi Constitution is for the joint management of oil fields and only includes oil wells that were active before August 2005 and the referendum over the country's constitution, from which oil production and exports took place and were referred to as the "current fields", and the oil fields that have been activated after this date are under the control of the Kurdistan Regional Government, and according to the texts of Law No. 22 approved in 2007, the Kurdistan-Iraq Oil and Gas Region, the activities of the fields are in accordance with the first paragraph of Article 112 of the Iraqi Constitution.

The statement from the Kurdistan Regional Government stressed that according to Article 2.92 of the Iraqi Constitution, the Iraqi parliament must pass a law to establish a federal court, but so far no such law has been approved by the parliament, and therefore there is no federal court in Iraq that is based on the country's constitution, and the court that issued the ruling on February 15, 2022 to dissolve the Kurdistan Region Oil and Gas Law has no legal authority, and the Kurdistan Region's Oil and Gas Law has the legal validity to be implemented and applied.

Reporter's code: 50101