Iraq Files New Complaint Against Kurdish Oil Exports

the latest maneuver by Baghdad to stanch slowly growing volumes of Kurdish crude exports.

The new request, filed late Thursday in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas, Galveston Division, in Houston, amends an earlier complaint asking for U.S. law enforcement to seize about one million barrels of crude, worth about $100 million, if the tanker attempts to discharge the oil at Galveston. It is one of several tankers that have left laden with oil pumped from Kurdistan, a mostly autonomous enclave of northern Iraq.

Baghdad says the exports are illegal, claiming all foreign sales of Iraqi crude must go through the central government's state marketing group. Amid a standoff between the central Iraqi government and the Kurdistan Regional Government, or KRG, Baghdad has also threatened to take legal action against any potential buyers.

Baghdad secured an order from the same court in July to seize the shipment should it come ashore. But last month, the court overruled the order on technical grounds related to jurisdiction after it was contested by the KRG.

The KRG has 21 days to respond to the new suit to avoid a default judgment against it by the court. A KRG official said Friday there wasn't a legal basis for Baghdad's claims. The tanker remains parked off the coast of Texas.

Earlier this year, landlocked Kurdistan started shipping its crude via pipeline to Ceyhan, Turkey, on the Mediterranean Sea. Before that, it sold a limited amount of crude to overseas buyers via trucks.

But the fate of most of the Kurdish oil so far exported by ship remains uncertain. The first tanker to set sail with Kurdish crude appears still to be off the shore of Morocco, where it hasn't yet been able to offload its cargo.