Iraqi Kurdish regional government’s territorial control set to boost oil export autonomy as well as Turkish support likely to increase, according to Zaineb al-Assam, Senior Analyst, Middle East & North Africa, IHS Country Risk.
The natural resources minister of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), Ashti Hawrami, said that the KRG had built a new pipeline from the oil-rich disputed city of Kirkuk in Northern Iraq to the independent Kurdish-controlled pipeline to Turkey.
This followed the deployment of Kurdish Peshmerga forces in Kirkuk on 12 June to deter any attack by the Islamist extremist insurgents of the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).
As ISIL progressively expands its control from Mosul to the northern cities of Tal Afar, Baiji, and Tikrit, and advances on Baghdad, the Kurdistan Region has remained comparatively secure, despite its proximity to locations of ISIL control.
The deployment of Peshmerga into northern towns abandoned by the Iraqi army has given the Kurdish authorities de facto control of disputed territories that lie just outside the region formally under KRG control, comprising Dahuk, Erbil, and Sulaimaniyah provinces.
The KRG has sought incorporation of disputed territories stretching from Ninevah to Diyalah, including the city of Kirkuk, through a referendum, and the central government’s military weakness makes Kurdish annexation of these areas increasingly likely. Meanwhile, according to Hawrami, two more tankers of crude oil were preparing to load at the Turkish port of Ceyhan, which had already been sold. An earlier sale of Kurdish crude via Turkey came with threats of a lawsuit by the Iraq government, but these are now even less likely to act as a hindrance to Turkey facilitating independent Kurdish oil exports. The threats to the oil industry in northern Iraq were also highlighted, when Sunni militants laying siege to the Baiji oil refinery launched a mortar attack on the site.
Weakening central government authority and the Kurds’ de facto control of the disputed territories including Kirkuk are likely to entail greater Kurdish autonomy over oil exports, if not complete Kurdish independence from Baghdad. The latter scenario becomes more likely with a protracted Sunni-Shia civil war and subsequent disarray in Baghdad, in addition to Turkish support. Should the KRG and Turkey construct additional pipelines, this would also suggest Turkish support for greater Kurdish autonomy if not the formal annexation of Kirkuk, which in itself would potentially pave the way for independence.