As exclusively revealed to OilPrice.com some years ago by a very high-ranking official from the Kremlin: “By keeping the West out of energy deals in Iraq, the end of Western hegemony in the Middle East will become the decisive chapter in the West’s final demise.” Consequently, the push has been on from Russia and China – especially since the U.S.’s unilateral withdrawal from the ‘nuclear deal’ with Iran in 2018 – to remove all Western firms from southern Iraq and from the semi-autonomous Kurdistan territory in its north as well. But behind that lay the fact that Rosneft had secured its influence in the region shortly after the extraordinary ‘Iraqi Kurdistan Independence Referendum’ in September 2017, as fully analysed in my latest book on the new global oil market order, through three far-reaching deals with the government of the Iraqi Kurdistan region (the KRG). The initial figures agreed by both sides were 550,000 bpd of oil a day from the KRG side to the Federal Government in Baghdad and 17% of the federal budget after sovereign expenses (around USD500 million at that time) per month in payment from Baghdad’s side to the KRG.
Author: Simon Watkins
Published at: 2025-11-24 23:00:00
Still want to read the full version? Full article
