The Affiliation of the Petroleum Trade of Kurdistan (APIKUR) applauds U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s efforts to restart oil exports from the Kurdistan Area of Iraq, together with in a name with Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani on February 25, 2025. In line with a readout of the decision revealed by the State Division, the 2 agreed on the necessity to rapidly reopen the Iraq-Türkiye Pipeline, and to honor contractual phrases for U.S. corporations working in Iraq to draw further funding.
The closure of this pipeline since March 2023 has denied landlocked Kurdistan’s entry to an important outlet to worldwide markets and has affected U.S. political and business pursuits, led to market uncertainty and threatened the area’s financial and safety stability. The ensuing lack of revenues to Kurdistan, Iraq, and the APIKUR corporations has totaled $27 billion and counting.
APIKUR additionally welcomes the Iraqi Prime Minister’s tackle to the Erbil Discussion board on February 26, 2025 that his authorities is now in search of to show a “new web page” with oil corporations working within the Kurdistan Area.
These statements come within the wake of a collection of statements by senior Baghdad and Erbil officers suggesting that exports are set to renew imminently.
As has been repeatedly made clear, APIKUR member corporations stay ready to right away resume exports as quickly as formal agreements are reached to supply surety of fee for previous and future exports according to our present contractual authorized and business phrases. There has not but been any outreach on this regard to APIKUR member corporations.
The authorized validity of the APIKUR member contracts with the Kurdistan Regional Authorities was not too long ago upheld by the Iraqi appellate courts. This ruling, along with the passage of a key modification to the Iraqi 2023-2025 finances regulation, have created a authorized and political framework inside which agreements could be reached.