KRG Oil Sales and its Bid for Independence

Aug 30, 2015 | Paul Iddon
View Original

A report in the Financial Times last week indicated that in recent months most of Israel's oil has come from the oil fields of Iraqi Kurdistan, part of which is piped from Kirkuk to Ceyhan in Turkey and from there sold to the international market.  

The Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) has unequivocally stated that they are not selling oil directly to Israel. The report quoted one KRG official declaring that Erbil does “not care where the oil goes once we have delivered it to the traders. Our priority is getting the cash to fund our Peshmerga forces against Daesh and to pay civil servants' salaries.” 

The emphasis by that Kurdish official brings to mind the case of Iran’s oil sales to Israel all the way back in 1973. The Italian journalist Oriana Fallaci broached the question to Iran's Shah and his explanation was essentially the same as the KRG one today. The oil is simply sold on the international market and doesn’t matter whoever buys it from there, or as the Shah put it at the time, “Our oil goes everywhere: why not Israel too? And why should I care if it goes to Israel? Where it goes, it goes,”