A Kurdistan Regional Government’s (KRG) Natural Resources Ministry statement dated February 20, 2019 said that an earlier halt of exports did not apply to “companies and refineries situated in the Region that have deals with the Kurdistan Region through official licenses.”

Nor does the order include the oil from central and southern Iraq that have official licenses to export oil to Iran through the Region, NRT reported.

The decision follows a decision by the Natural Resources Ministry on February 14 to halt stop all oil exports to Iran through the Region’s customs checkpoints.

Iraq and the Kurdistan Region have a complex relationship with Iran in terms of trading energy products. Both are heavily reliant on Iranian natural gas to fuel their power plants and send hundreds of tanker trucks to Iran each day from the Kirkuk oil fields for refining.

Iraq received a 90-day waiver extension to continue to trade with Iran’s energy sector, which expires on March 19. Washington has not indicated whether it will be extended for Iraq, but has said that it will likely not do so for other countries that have received waivers.

As recently as early January, Kurdish officials were saying that the oil trade between the Kurdistan Region and Iran would continue, saying that relations between the Region and its neighbors were more important that what Washington wanted.

“Neighboring countries are more important for Kurds,” KRG Representative to Iran Nazim Dabagh told Voice of America on January 7.

Reporter’s code: 50101