BAGHDAD, Dec. 3 (UPI) -- An oil deal reached between Turkey and the semiautonomous Kurdish government in Iraq violates the Iraqi Constitution, an Iraqi lawmaker said.
The Kurdish government in northern Iraq reached a deal with Turkey to supply oil through a cross-border pipeline. The government said in a statement Tuesday the pipeline would run from the Taq Taq oil field in the Kurdish north to the Turkish port of Ceyhan and be able to export 1 million barrels of oil per day by 2015.
Ali Dhari, deputy chairman of an oil and gas committee in the Iraqi Parliament, was quoted by the New York Times as saying Monday the central government disagreed with the decision.
"The Kurdistan deal with Turkey is a huge violation against the Iraqi Constitution because they didn't make the deal with the coordination of the central government," he said.
The central government in Baghdad and the Kurdistan Regional Government are at odds on who controls what aspects of the energy sector. The Times reports the Turkish and Kurdish governments agreed to honor a provision to allocate 83 percent of the export profits to Baghdad and 17 percent to the KRG.
The KRG in its statement Tuesday said it was "taking full responsibility for the oil pipeline transportation process to replace the current trucking of oil to Turkey, but is inviting the federal government and others to act as observers to the process."
