Shafaq News– Baghdad
Iraq’s State Organization for Marketing of Oil (SOMO) on Saturday denied reports of crude oil smuggling from the Kurdistan Region, saying all exports are conducted exclusively through federal channels.
SOMO director Ali al-Shatari told Shafaq News that the Oil Ministry coordinates directly with the Kurdistan Regional Government’s Ministry of Natural Resources and that the agreement governing the resumption of Regional exports is operating smoothly.
“No drop of oil leaves the Region outside SOMO,” he said, adding that any past irregularities no longer apply.
Kurdistan, he explained, currently exports about 200,000 barrels per day through the Fishkhabour route to Turkiye’s Ceyhan port, while roughly 50,000 barrels per day are consumed locally. Monthly export revenues of about $350 million to $400 million are transferred directly to the federal treasury, with extraction costs compensated at $16 per barrel under the budget law.
Meanwhile, investment activity in Kurdistan’s oil fields has picked up again and production is expected to rise, he told our agency, noting that a global consultancy has been commissioned to review production and transport costs and assess the Region’s entitlements. The existing export arrangement, he said, is renewable after delivering “high-level” results.
Exports through the Kirkuk–Ceyhan pipeline stopped in March 2023 after an arbitration panel at the International Chamber of Commerce in Paris ordered Turkiye to pay Iraq $1.5 billion in damages for allowing oil shipments from the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) without Baghdad’s consent. Flows resumed on September 27, 2025, after Baghdad-Erbil talks produced a framework placing SOMO in charge of managing and marketing Kurdish crude exports.
Still, the Kurdish Prime Minister Masrour Barzaniin November described the agreement to resume Kurdistan oil exports via Turkiye’s Ceyhan port as only a temporary fix, pointing to the need to pass an Oil and Gas Law to regulate the management of Iraq’s natural resources.
Read more: Resumption of oil exports from Kurdistan: Fragile stability with strategic implications