BAGHDAD: Iraq halted crude exports from the semi-autonomous Kurdistan region and northern Kirkuk fields on Saturday, an oil official told Reuters, after the country won a longstanding arbitration case against Turkiye.
The decision to stop shipments of 450,000 barrels per day (bpd) of crude relates to a case from 2014, when Baghdad claimed that Turkiye violated a joint agreement by allowing the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) to export oil through a pipeline to the Turkish port of Ceyhan.
Baghdad deems KRG exports via Turkish Ceyhan port as illegal.
“Iraq was officially informed by the International Court of Arbitration [about the] final ruling on Thursday and it was in favor of Iraq,” a senior oil ministry official said.
Turkiye informed Iraq that it will respect the arbitration ruling, a source said.
Turkish shipping officials told Iraqi employees at Turkiye’s Ceyhan oil export hub that no ship will be allowed to load Kurdish crude without the approval of the Iraqi government, according to a document seen by Reuters.
Turkiye subsequently halted the pumping of Iraqi crude from the pipeline that leads to Ceyhan, a separate document seen by Reuters showed.
On Saturday, Iraq stopped pumping oil through its side of the pipeline which runs from its northern Kirkuk oil fields, one of the officials told Reuters.
Iraq had been pumping 370,000 bpd of KRG crude and 75,000 bpd of federal crude through the pipeline before it was halted, according to a source familiar with pipeline operations.
“A delegation from the oil ministry will travel to Turkiye soon to meet energy officials to agree on new mechanism to export Iraq’s northern crude oil in line with the arbitration ruling,” a second oil ministry official said.

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The final hearing on the arbitration case was held in Paris in July 2022, but it took months for the arbitrators, the secretariat of the arbitration court and the International Chamber of Commerce to approve the verdict, a source familiar with the process told Reuters.
The impact on the KRG’s oil production depends heavily on the duration of the Iraqi Turkish Pipeline (ITP) closure, sources said, adding this would cause significant uncertainty to oil firms operating in the Kurdistan Region in Iraq (KRI).
A cessation of exports through the pipeline would trigger a collapse of the KRI economy, according to a letter last year to US representatives from Dallas-based HKN Energy, which operates in the region.
Turkiye would need to source more crude from Iran and Russia to make up for the loss of northern Iraqi oil, the letter said.
Analysts have warned that companies could withdraw from the region unless the environment improved.
Foreign oil firms, including HKN Energy and Gulf Keystone, have linked their investment plans this year to the reliability of KRG payments, which face months of delays.

BEIRUT: Weeks after a violent crackdown on migrants in Tunisia that triggered a perilous rush to leave by smuggler boats for Italy, many African nationals are still homeless and jobless and some say they still face racist attacks.

Outside the UN refugee agency in Tunis, dozens of African migrants stood protesting this week by the temporary camp where they have lived, including with children, since authorities urged landlords to force them from their homes.

“We need evacuation. Tunisia is not safe. No one has a future here when you have this color. It is a crime to have this color,” said Josephus Thomas, pointing to the skin on his forearm.

In announcing the crackdown on Feb. 21, President Kais Saied said illegal immigration was a criminal conspiracy to change Tunisia’s demography, language the African Union described as “racialized hate speech.”

US Assistant Secretary of State Barbara Leaf said Saied’s comments had unleashed “attacks and a tidal wave of racist rhetoric,” with rights groups saying hundreds of migrants reported being attacked or insulted.

Saied and Tunisia’s foreign minister have rejected accusations that he or the government are racist and they announced steps to ease visa regulations for Africans and reminded police of anti-racism laws.

While the official crackdown appeared to end weeks ago, migrants say they still face abuse.

“People told me ‘since you are in our country after the president’s speech, don’t you have any dignity?’ I kept silent and they told me I am dirt,” said Awadhya Hasan Amine, a Sudanese refugee outside the UNHCR headquarters in Tunis.

Amine has lived in Tunis for five years after fleeing Sudan and then Libya with her husband. Now 30, she has been living on the street outside the UNHCR headquarters since local people pelted her house in the capital’s Rouad district with rocks.

“We want to live in a place of safety, stability and peace. We don’t want problems in Tunisia,” she said.

Although some West African countries evacuated hundreds of their citizens earlier this month, many remain stuck in Tunisia, unable to support themselves let alone afford passage home or pay smugglers hundreds of dollars to ferry them to Europe.

“Tunisia is an African country. Why do they do racist things to us?” said Moumin Sou, from Mali, who was sacked from his job working behind a bar after the president’s speech and was beaten up the next day by a man in the street who stole his money.

Sou wants to return home, he said, but many others are determined to travel on to Europe.

In the wake of the crackdown, in which police detained hundreds of undocumented migrants and authorities urged employers to lay them off and landlords to evict them, smuggler crossings to Italy have surged.

Tunisian National Guard official Houssem Jbeli said on Wednesday alone the coast guard had stopped 30 boats carrying more than 2,000 people. On the same day and the following day four boats sank, with five people drowned, authorities said.