Exclusion of giant oil companies harms Iraq and oil sector, says KBC
Muayyid Tayyeb said: "The Iraqi government's exclusion of major oil companies that contract with the Kurdistan Region, such as Exxon Mobil, Chevron Corp. and French companies, will make the big companies move away from Iraq because they will not cancel their contracts with the Kurdistan Region."
The Iraqi Oil Ministry announced on Tuesday about preventing Chevron Corp. from signing any oil deals with the ministry after the company contracted with the Kurdistan Region.
"The Iraqi oil sector will decline, because there is a huge difference between contracting with well-known international companies or small companies with limited experience and capabilities and are not known on the global level.
"The policy of the adviser of the Deputy Prime Minister for Energy Affairs Hussein al-Shahristani is harming Iraq and its oil sector, while it did not affect these companies. We in the Kurdistan Region have the evidence to prove that we are more capable and efficient in managing the oil file better than the Iraqi government as we were more capable and efficient in solving the problem of electricity.
"The government in Baghdad shows sometimes that the oil policy of the region is a waste for the wealth of Iraq or that the region refrains from distributing the wealth among the Iraqi people, knowing that the revenues of any barrel of oil that we export abroad go into the federal treasury. There is no disagreement that the oil of Basra province and the region belongs to the Iraqi people but there is disagreement about the management of oil."
The region signed about 40 oil contracts with international companies to develop oil fields, but Baghdad does not recognize such contracts. The two sides held several rounds of negotiations without reaching a final solution about this issue.
In April the Kurdistan Regional Government stopped its oil exports because Baghdad did not pay the dues of foreign companies operating in the region.
AKnews
