In an oil and gas gathering held last May in the Iraqi Kurdistan regional capital, Erbil, Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG)'s minister of natural resources, Mr Ashti Hawrami, announced that an agreement has been reached between Turkey and the KRG to build pipelines to export oil and gas from Kurdistan to Turkey and from there to the world market.
It is the first such step taken by the KRG since 2005 when it started to invite foreign oil companies to explore in the Kurdistan Region.
Meantime, the Kurdish minister stressed that the revenues will go to all the Iraqi people, irrespective where they reside, in Kurdistan or the rest of Iraq. Quoted by krg.org, Mr Hawrami said, “we will only retain 17%”, which is KRG's share from the Iraqi federal budget.
However, this reassurance by the Kurdish minister did not stop Bagdad’s continuing criticism of the KRG for contracting with foreign oil and gas companies to explore in the Kurdish Region.
This comes shortly after the world oil giant, ExxonMobil, signed a contract with the KRG last October, to explore in the Kurdish region. The deal further fueled the existing tension between the Kurdistan Region and Baghdad over the legality of Kurds' inviting foreign companies to search for oil in their region. The 2005 Iraqi constitution recognizes Kurdistan as a federal region run by its regional parliament and government.
KRG takes into consideration two Articles of the Iraqi constitution that allow the
Kurds to conclude exploration deals with foreign companies for natural resources in their own region, but Baghdad still does not recognize the contracts signed between KRG and foreign oil companies, so far numbering over fifty, and considers the deals illegal.
ExxonMobil's move despite the risk of being blacklisted by Baghdad can be seen as an indication of growing Western and other international oil companies’ interest in the Kurdistan Region, which estimates its oil reserves at 45 billion barrels, equal to more than 40 percent of that of the rest of Iraq. KRG offers production share agreements to the oil companies while Baghdad limits its offer to service contracts.
Furthermore, the discovery of significant reserves of natural gas - estimated over 100 trillion cubic feet, surpassing Libya's gas reserve - attracted those European companies, which form the Nabucco gas pipeline project that is due to link Caucasus' gas fields to Europe through Turkey. Nabucco is meant to reduce Europe's dependency on Russian gas. Since 2008, several rounds of talks have been held between the KRG and some of Nabucco consortium companies, leading to cooperation agreements on the possibility of linking Kurdistan gas fields to Europe through the future Nabucco pipeline network. Again, a move criticized by Baghdad, while the Kurds insist that it is constitutional as long as Baghdad's State Oil Marketing Organization (SOMO) markets the oil and gas extracted in Kurdistan.
ExxonMobil's move has also encouraged other major companies to follow the example. "Many companies go and invest in Kurdistan, I don't see why Total cannot do so" said recently, Christophe de Margerie, CEO of the French giant, quoted by lefigaro.fr. The French company has conducted intensive negotiations to explore in the Kurdistan Region, but "has not yet concluded any deal", said Total's chief. Other major companies were reported to have held talks with Kurdish authorities to explore in the Region.
Although analysts may give credit to the Kurds in their interpretation of the constitution's articles on natural resources, it seems that Baghdad seriously fears the economic development imbalance be, progressively, in favor of an oil-rich Kurdistan Region, which may consequently lead to further political autonomy; to a point that this autonomy could become a necessity for ensuring energy supply to developing countries.
Kurdistan's political stability and prevailing security led the Region, through the past eight years, to witness a significant economic development, creating a relatively favorable environment for foreign investment. Since the fall of the former Iraqi regime in 2003, Kurdistan has, to a large extend, settled its main infrastructural issues, while the rest of Iraq still suffers from lack of basic services, despite high income from it's oil sale.
Iraqi Kurdistan's stability appears to gain growing importance, particularly for those countries for which this region could become an important source of energy security. On the other hand, although they have the political and economic conditions to proclaim statehood, Iraqi Kurds seem to be politically prudent, given their past experience with regional and Western powers, as well as the current growing new Sunni/Shia power pattern in the Middle East, represented by conflicting regional countries.
Whatever is to be the future geopolitical settlement of Iraqi Kurdistan, there could be no return to the pre-1991 status-quo, where the Kurdish issue was dealt with as a humanitarian internal Iraqi affair. Therefore, it is in Kurdistan’s interest to take advantage of its own natural resources as a political and geopolitical tool, helping the Kurds to obtain an internationally recognized status that can protect them against any possible re-emergence of hegemonic political ideologies, which, in the past, provoked repression and mass-extermination campaigns against them.
With the value of its current oil production capacity of 300,000 barrels per day being almost equal, if sold, to last year's KRG budget, which it receives from Baghdad as its annual 17% share, the Kurdistan Region is a potential independent and viable economy. Adding to that, its significant reserves in oil and natural gas can comfortably ensure the production raise capacity to over two million barrels per day and consequently consolidate its economy, as well as its regional/international partnerships.
In such conditions, the Region's current constitutional status of federal region becomes, de facto, unsuitable to Kurdistan’s growing economic and political reality.
A possible confederation with Baghdad may be, geopolitically, the less harming solution for the time being, given the ongoing Arab Spring on its Western border - the outcome of which will certainly have serious impacts on the entire region - and possible neighboring countries’ hostility to statehood. A Kurdish confederation in Iraq - in its definition of union between independent entities - appears to be the smoothest political and constitutional transition that can keep the current geopolitical pattern unthreatened as long as it happens within the Iraqi boundaries, keeps borders unbroken and states not dismembered, while it gives the Kurds a legal ground for further autonomy of action. By trying to gain further regional and international support, and lobbying to develop a system of oil exportation through its neighboring countries, in accordance with Baghdad, a Kurdistan confederation in Iraq could negotiate the oil issue, disputed areas and other matters of tension with Baghdad in an equal to equal position.
On its side, it is in Baghdad's interest to be more receptive to Kurdish demands if it wants to keep Kurdistan inside Iraq and profit from its wealth as a solid economic and political partner, and possible future close ally if the Kurds are to declare independence.
Non-application of the constitution's articles, which propose settlement for several outstanding issues, has worsened the relations between Baghdad and the Kurdistan Region.
So far, the fate of almost two million people who live in areas claimed by the Kurds to be part of Kurdistan, remain uncertain; an issue for which Article 140 of the constitution proposes reasonable settlement through a referendum, which had to be held in late 2007. Almost five years later, no serious steps have been taken by Baghdad towards organizing such referendum. The same attitude of refusing the promulgation of an oil and gas law to regulate natural resources production in the country, as stipulated by the constitution, has pushed the Kurds to take unilateral measure which is a right, they say, based on the Iraqi constitution.
It is almost inevitable that the Kurds are heading towards further autonomy. Therefore, it is not in Baghdad's interest to lose a solid partner within Iraq or a future potential close ally as an independent state.
In order to be able to meet its constitutional commitments, Iraq needs to become a regional player by its own, and accepts the new Kurdish reality. If any separation is to take place as the medium or long-term consequence of a possible constitutional adoption of confederation, it could then be a smooth Czechoslovakian-style divorce.
On its side, as an oil producing region, the KRG could, from now, lay the ground for the development of an economy of production by giving impetus to the country's other vital economic and industrial sectors in order to avoid any future contagion of the Dutch-disease.
The Kurdistan Region has achieved significant progress and development since 2003, both at domestic and regional/international levels. To move forward in reinforcing this undertaking, the KRG could focus, as the new KRG cabinet has recently stated, on consolidating and developing the concept of Citizenship, as the founding link between the Region's authorities and the society, through modernising its political and economic institutions and establishing a solid economy; thus becoming one of the leading regional entities in investing in human development.
If the discovery of oil was behind the partition of land of the Kurds almost a century ago, and long-lasting agony throughout the 20th century, this time oil may become, if well handled and operated, a factor of their autonomy, stability and prosperity on the long run.
Undermining Kurdistan's current stability would not only conduct to inevitable disruption in a promising future oil and gas supply, but can create a new spot of unrest which could rapidly propagate in the region, fuelling other zones of tension in the Middle East; to a point that it may well lead to an uncontrollable situation. Therefore, maintaining current Iraqi Kurdistan's stability and encouraging its development could be seen as crucial to expand stability in a volatile Middle East. It is vital that the West and international community take this point into account when dealing with the region.
* Hoshmand Othman, MA in Middle Eastern history and politics, EHESS, Paris.
Source: Rudaw
Imagine the power that brings to kurdistan and Milky boy cant do shit 
poor shar-zistani and milky 
