Iraq Oil Min: Hunt Oil Deal with Kurd Government Illegal

Hunt Oil Co.’s agreement with Iraq’s semiautonomous Kurdish region to explore for oil is illegal, Iraq’s oil minister Hussein al-Shahristani said Monday, in his first public reaction to the deal announced over the weekend.

“Any oil deal has no standing as far as the government of Iraq is concerned,”
said al-Shahristani. “All these contracts have to be approved by the Federal Authority before they are legal. This (contract) was not presented for approval. It has no standing.”


His comments, delivered as he arrived for an OPEC ministers meeting in the Austrian capital, underscore the central government’s view that exploration contracts with foreign companies should be signed only after the adoption of a new national oil law.

The deal is one of several the Kurds have signed with foreign oil companies in the past few years and the first since the Kurds put their own oil law into effect in August.

Rigzone