A rift over who will control Kurdistan’s crude production is blocking the approval of a new landmark oil and gas law in Iraq, a deputy said in comments published on Monday.

Several issues delaying the endorsement of the new law, debated since 2005, have been resolved over the past months, but it is still facing a stumbling block due to a dispute over the control of Kurdistan’s oil output and revenues, said Zainab Al-Musawi, a member of the Iraqi Parliament’s Oil and Gas Committee.

“The main issue now is the management of oilfields in Kurdistan and revenues generated from crude exports…Baghdad insists that the federal government should manage those resources but Erbil is opposing this proposal,” Musawi told Iraq’s Mawazein News agency.

Musawi said the two sides have been locked in negotiations to resolve the problem, adding that this law would “redraw the oil map in Iraq.”

Iraq, a key OPEC member, controls nearly 145 trillion barrels of recoverable oil deposits and four trillion cubic metres of gas. 

(Writing by Nadim Kawach; Editing by Anoop Menon)

(anoop.menon@lseg.com)

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