According to Middle East News, the Ministry of Natural Resources of the Kurdistan Region of Iraq considered the actions of the Ministry of Oil of this country against the customers of the region's oil and a political attempt to violate the Iraqi Constitution.
According to Rudaw, the Ministry of Natural Resources of the Kurdistan Region of Iraq denounced, in a late Friday, August 26, statement a letter by the Iraqi Oil Marketing and Sales Company (SOMO), affiliated to the Iraqi Ministry of Oil.
The letter has reportedly warned the buyers of the Region's oil and that SOMO will take legal measures against them.
The statement added that the SOMO company action is a new step of "false information with political purposes" which has been taken by the Iraqi Ministry of Oil and "political parties in Baghdad to violate the federal law of Iraq" and added that the move " is to weaken the talks that are going on in good faith between Erbil and Baghdad to reach a plan for the joint management of Iraq's energy resources."
The statement emphasized that the letter from SOMO has been written based on "the opinion of several lawyers who call themselves the Federal Court of Iraq, while there is no such thing as the Federal Court, and its rulings are not binding because it has not been established by the law."
The statement has announced that according to the constitution, the House of Representatives must regulate the federal court's law with the approval of the two-thirds of its members while the legal move has not been taken, and as a result, Iraq does not have a legal federal court.
This statement emphasized that Baghdad has adopted the strategy of creating distrust in foreign markets due to the weakness of its government institutions and added that it is the "legal right" of the Kurdistan Region of Iraq to make the most use of its hydrocarbon resources.
The statement further emphasized that the Kurdistan Region of Iraq adheres to the process of negotiation to legally resolve disputes with Baghdad over oil incomes.A

ccording to a letter issued by Iraq’s Ministry of Oil dated back to August 23, Iraq’s state-owned oil marketer SOMO has threatened fresh legal action against buyers of oil from the Kurdistan Region.

Iraq has recently made fresh attempts to control revenue from the Kurdistan Region by urging oil and gas firms operating there to sign new contracts with state-owned marketer SOMO rather than the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG).
The letter is the latest in a series of moves by Iraq’s oil ministry, and the Kurdistan Region Ministry of Natural Resources said, “The letter is nothing but another drop of fabricated misleading information and it’s politically motivated”.
The KRG has been developing oil and gas resources independently of the federal government, and in 2007 enacted its own law that established the directives by which the region would administer them.
In February, Iraq’s federal court deemed the oil and gas law regulating the oil industry in Kurdistan unconstitutional and demanded that the KRG hand over their crude supplies.
The Kurdistan Regional Government has repeatedly rejected the ruling.
“The letter is an attempt to disrupt the talks between Erbil and Baghdad and obstruct them, and that is the extension of the same policy of Iraq’s Federal court that has taken against the Kurdistan Region,” it added.

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