The Kurdistan region is floating above 45 billion barrels of oil reserves, about a third of Iraq’s 142.5 billion barrels. Kurdistan reserves exceed those of major oil members of OPEC.
The reserves of Kirkuk’s oil fields are estimated at more than 35 billion barrels with a production capacity of 750,000 barrels to 1 million barrels per day.
Oil has been produced from the giant Aba Karkar or Baba Karkar fields near the city of Kirkuk since 1934. The city is famous for other fields such as Jambour Field, North and South Bai Hassan Fields, Avana Field, Nana Wa Field and Kiwi Port Field.
Kirkuk oil fields are characterized by abundant production and good quality of light crude, despite the content of sulfur dioxide H2S, which needs to be processed before preparing for export.
In recent weeks, the oil and energy committee in the Iraqi parliament decided to form a fact-finding committee on oil exports in the northern Kurdistan region. This comes in light of accusations against the central government of the Kurdistan region, evading the supply of “Baghdad” share of oil.
This year’s budget provides that the federal government has to pay the salaries of employees of the Kurdistan region, in return Kurdistan should deliver the Government of Baghdad 250 thousand barrels of oil per day.
The Baghdad government estimates that the production of “Kurdistan” is up to 500 thousand barrels per day, but nothing of them reaches the federal government. On the other side Kurdish officials say the federal government owes them $80 billion.