In Wasting Oil Wealth, Baghdad and the KRG Have More in Common Than Meets the Eye

Apr 9, 2020 | Nick Augustijn
View Original

With the slump in oil prices, and some analysts forecasting prices to head towards $10 per barrel, yet more hard times are ahead for Iraq and the Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI), where oil exports account for more than 70% of total exports. Lower prices and the novel coronavirus could aggravate existing fault lines, much as in 2014, when the Islamic State (IS) and oil price drop wreaked similar havoc. The governing Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) will have its hands full.

It is all the more regrettable, then, that the KRI seems to be adding chapters of its own to a book that is beginning to read like wasted, rather than unrealized, potential. In August 2019, Oilprice.com revealed that a lawsuit brought against the KRG and its Minister of Natural Resources Ashti Hawrami over illegal practices. Citing anonymous sources, the exposé claimed that extracting illegal payments from oil and gas companies wanting to work in the KRI has been Hawrami’s “standard modus operandi” since taking office in 2006.