Turkey provides Iraqi Kurdistan $200 million after oil pipeline halt
3/12/2016
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ANKARA,— Iraq’s Kurdistan has received $200 million from Turkey to help Kurdish finances, which have been hit by a recent oil pipeline export stoppage, two industry sources told Reuters on Friday.

“An emergency aid transfer has been sent to KRG (Kurdistan Regional Government) this week. The pipeline was pumping 600,000 barrels per day and the halt has deprived the KRG of an important source of revenue,” one of the sources said.

Iraq’s Kurdish region resumed pumping oil to Turkey on Friday, more than three weeks after the pipeline was closed due to Turkish military operations, senior oil company officials said.

Oil is the main source of Kurdistan’s revenues and the suspension further squeezed the already cash-strapped region’s finances.

The interruption had aggravated a deep financial crisis for the autonomous administration as Kurdistan usually exports about 600,000 barrels per day via Ceyhan in Turkey.

Oil exports from Iraqi Kurdistan fell by almost half to an average of 350,067 barrels per day (bpd) in February as a result of an ongoing outage of the pipeline to Turkey, the Kurdistan region’s Ministry of Natural Resources MNR said last Monday.

The pipeline runs through Turkish Kurdistan, which is engulfed in the worst violence since the 1990s after a two year-long ceasefire between the state and Kurdish militants broke down last July.

https://ekurd.net/turkey-provides-kurdistan-million-2016-03-12