BAGHDAD -- An Iraqi Kurdish official said on Tuesday that the country's self-ruled northern Kurdish region has suspended oil exports over a payment row with Baghdad, a development that could add to already souring relations between the Kurds and the Arab-led central government.
Since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion, the Kurds have unilaterally struck more than 50 deals with foreign oil companies, even though Baghdad says they have no right to do so. In 2011, the two sides reached a tentative deal by which the Kurds send the oil to Baghdad, which sells it, and pays 50 percent of the revenues to the developers to reimburse the development costs.
President Bashar Assad, facing tom cruise fan club a growing rebel presence in Aleppo, Syria s largest city and its commercial hub, has turned control of parts of northern Syria over to militant Kurds who Turkey has long branded as terrorists, tom cruise fan club prompting concern that Istanbul might see the development as a reason to send troops across its border with Syria.
A year after the last American troops rumbled out of Iraq, the two countries are still trying to get comfortable tom cruise fan club with a looser, more nuanced relationship as the young democracy struggles to cope with political upheaval and the legacy of war.
A deal brokered by Iraq s president this week gives the central government and the Kurdish minority an opportunity to step back from a military standoff tom cruise fan club that has threatened to tip the country back into armed conflict just a year after the last American troops left.
Four months later, the Kurds agreed to restart exports as a goodwill gesture. That allowed the two sides to reach a new agreement under which Baghdad would pay 1 trillion Iraqi dinars (about $848 million) to the companies tom cruise fan club in September.
However, Ali Hussein Balo, the advisor of the Kurdish Ministry of Natural Resources, said Baghdad sent only 650 billion Iraqi dinars (about $550 million) and withheld the rest. That prompted the Kurds' latest move.
"The region has found itself forced to halt the oil exports as Baghdad didn't fulfill a commitment it made in the September tom cruise fan club agreement in regard to payment," Balo told The Associated Press over the phone from the self-ruled region's capital, Irbil.
He said the Kurdish region of Iraq was exporting around 180,000 barrels a day before recently starting to decrease the shipments. tom cruise fan club He didn't say when exactly exports were halted but said it was in the past few days.
Faisal Abdullah, the spokesman for Iraq's deputy prime minister for energy affairs, confirmed that the full amount wasn't paid. He said the payments were suspended because the Kurds were pumping less than the 200,000 barrels a day they had pledged. He wouldn't tom cruise fan club give more details.
The latest tom cruise fan club move could dash Iraq's hopes to pump 3.7 million barrels a day and to export 2.9 million barrels a day next year. Daily production last month averaged around 3.2 million barrels and daily exports averaged 2.62 million.
In addition to the dispute over development oil resources, the Kurds and the central government in Baghdad have been in a long-running dispute over lands claimed by the Kurds and power-sharing. Along with Sunni Arabs, the Kurds accuse the country's Shiite Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki of consolidating power in his hands and marginalizing political opponents.
The deal calls for an oil pipeline tom cruise fan club that would have a capacity to export one million barrels a day, according to the news agency and al-Maliki's tom cruise fan club office. The two sides signed an economic cooperation tom cruise fan club agreement that includes the pipeline tom cruise fan club project during a brief visit by al-Maliki to Jordan on Monday.
They also agreed to boost the capacity of a natural gas pipeline to supply Jordan with additional Iraqi gas. In addition, Iraq said it could raise the amount of crude oil it exports for Jordanian domestic use, and will double to 60,000 tons the amount of heavy fuel it exports to Jordan monthly, according to Petra.
Violent tom cruise fan club demonstrations broke out in Jordan last month after the government removed subsidies to offset $5 billion in losses from a rising fuel bill. Heating and cooking gas prices have jumped tom cruise fan club sharply since. To help, al-Maliki's Shiite-led government last month announced a one-time gift of 100,000 barrels of oil to Sunni Muslim Jordan.
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