Iraq’s Abadi asks why Kurdistan withholds salaries despite selling oil: MP

BAGHDAD,— Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi has asked why the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) doesn’t pay public servants as it sells 1.3 million barrels of oil per day (bpd), a lawmaker has disclosed.

A Kurdish lawmaker in the Iraqi Parliament, Hoshyar Abdulla, told NRT that on Saturday the Defense and Security Committee met with Abadi to discuss the political and economic situation in Baghdad and the Kurdistan Region.

“Abadi said the Kurdistan Region sells 20 percent of Iraq’s oil and all the Kurdish parties have a division in it without differences,” Abdulla added.

The Iraqi government has several issues with the Kurdistan Region, the lawmaker said citing Abadi, but for now the priority is the fight against Islamic State (ISIS) and Mosul liberation.

According to the lawmaker, Abadi wanted to liberate Hawija before Mosul, but Erbil created problems and obstacles to the idea – the oil fields in Kirkuk are said to be the reason.

Tensions between the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) and the central government hit a high in 2015, after officials from both sides accused each other of failing to abide by the terms of an oil revenue sharing deal struck by officials in December 2014.

Officials from the KRG and Baghdad signed the revenue-sharing agreement in December 2014 which would have seen the Iraqi federal government provide the KRG with 17 percent of the federal budget in return for oil exports amounting to 550,000 bpd.

That deal collapsed months later when the KRG ceased transfers to the Iraqi State Organization for Marketing Oil (SOMO) altogether. Baghdad in turn stopped the transfers of budget payments.

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