Monday, 14 December, 2020 - 07:45
Protests against delayed payment of salaries in Sulaymaniyah, Kurdistan region, last Friday. (AFP) Baghdad – Asharq Al-Awsat
Parliamentary pressure is building against the government of Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi over allegations that the country’s borrowing law has been violated. This coincides with Kurdish officials going into fierce negotiations with Baghdad to acquire much needed funds to dispense unpaid public sector workers.
Headed by Kurdistan Region Deputy Prime Minister Qubad Talabani, the Kurdish delegation has been in Baghdad since Thursday in pursuit of a settlement to the financial disagreements between Erbil and Baghdad.
The Kurdish delegation met on Sunday with Finance Minister Ali Allawi, Oil Minister Ihsan Abdul Jabbar and officials from Iraq’s State Organization for Marketing of Oil (SOMO).
Since the U.S. sanctions snapped back on Iran’s oil industry, relations between Iran and Iraq have grown more complex and controversial as a series of security and political events in the two countries have captured global attention. Yet while the political aspect of the Iran-Iraq relationship has been dominating coverage of the countries, their ongoing competition in the oil market has not and once American sanctions are removed, Iran will be returning to a very different oil market.
Sanctions and an Opportunity for Iraq
The return of U.S. sanctions in 2018 was an opportunity for Tehran’s oil rivals, among them Iraq, to fill the gap left by Iranian crude oil especially in the highly prized Asian market as Iranian exports began to fall. When the U.S. ended the sanctions waivers in May 2019 to import Iranian oil, Tehran’s crude and condensate exports plummeted to below 1 million barrels per day (Mbd), compared to 2.57 Mbd the same month in 2018, according to TankerTrackers.com