-The Kurdistan region said on Sunday it expects to start exporting its crude oil production along a new pipeline to the Turkish border by August 2013, defying Baghdad in a long-running dispute over who should control the country’s oil exports.

“In August 2013 we will be able to directly export crude from the Kurdish region’s fields,” Ashti Hawrami, Minister of Natural Resources of the Kurdistan Regional Government said at an oil conference in Kurdistan on Sunday. “We will be responsible for exporting oil. It will still be Iraqi oil.”


Minister Hawrami said once direct exports begin Kurdistan would take the 17 percent of revenues the region is allowed from Iraq’s national budget and pass the rest to the federal government.


The minister said the first stage of the pipeline would be completed by October this year to carry crude from the Taq Taq oilfield. The second phase would connect to the Kirkuk-Ceyhan pipeline with a capacity of 1 million barrels per day by August next year.


He said Kurdistan was also developing plans to build a separate pipeline that could connect to a refinery in Turkey's Ceyhan port by 2014.




PNA