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Kurdistan denies agreeing to hand over its oil to Baghdad

January 26, 2018 at 1:27 am

Prime Minister of Iraqi Kurdish Regional Government (IKRG) Nechirvan Barzani speaks during a press conference in Germany on 18 December 2017 [David Stanley/Flickr]

The prime minister of Kurdistan Regional Government, Nechirvan Barzani, has said that his government will not hand over the Iraqi region’s oil to the federal government in Baghdad, contrary to what Iraqi Prime Minister Haider Abadi had said on Thursday.

Speaking to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Abadi added that his country will abide by OPEC limits to keep the price of oil stable.

Abadi said in the conference that Iraq’s reconstruction will require between $55 and $100 billion dollars, according to Reuters.

Foreign investments are the only way for Iraq’s reconstruction to move forward, Abadi said.

Last week, talks between Baghdad and Arbil led to reaching an agreement that the federal government would lift the ban it had imposed on the Arbil and Sulaimaniyah airports in response to the independence referendum that Kurdistan held on 25 September.

Read: The independence gamble has misfired for Iraq’s Kurds

The talks took place between delegations representing both the federal and KRG government.

Relations between the two sides deteriorated in the wake of the referendum, which was met with Iraqi, regional and international rejection. Baghdad had to order the Iraqi military to restore control over the areas that the Kurdish Peshmargah forces took over after 2003.