Iraq/Kurdistan: Iraq Turmoil Threatens Billions in Oil Traders' Kurd Deals

Oct 18, 2017 | Javier Blas, Bloomberg
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The crisis unfolding around the Iraqi city of Kirkuk has left some of the world’s largest commodity trading houses worried the country’s autonomous Kurdish region will struggle to repay billions of dollars in cash-for-oil loans. The approximately $3.5 billion in debts were going to be met with the roughly 500,000 to 600,000 barrels a day of crude that the northern region of Iraq was pumping, according to people familiar with the information, asking not to be named discussing private information. But output has now collapsed to about half that level after the federal government in Baghdad recaptured some oilfields that the Kurds seized in 2014.