Official Says Iraqi Oil Talks Deadlocked

Iraq’s main political parties are deadlocked over a key oil law and the legislation has been sent back to party leaders to see if they can salvage it, an official involved in the talks said Thursday.

The Wednesday meeting failed after Shiite and Sunni Arab representatives were unable to agree with Kurdish negotiators, said the official, who represented a Shiite party in the talks and spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the process.
At Wednesday’s meeting, Shiites and Sunni Arabs agreed on language giving more powers to the predominantly Sunni center of the country – where there is little oil – while Kurds argued in favor of more control for their semiautonomous and oil-rich northern region as outlined in the Cabinet-approved version, the official said.

Other disagreements came over how to manage oil fields, both operating and as-yet undiscovered, the official said.

The Shiites and Sunni Arabs argued that contracts covering fields that produce more than 100,000 barrels of oil per day must have parliamentary approval, and that contracts from smaller fields should be approved by the state-run National Oil Company, the official said.

The Kurdish side argued that contracts should be decided by regional authorities, he said.

Complicating matters, the Kurdish self-governing region in northern Iraq in August enacted its own law governing foreign oil investments, angering the central government in Baghdad.

News Channel 7