After more than a week of pumping crude at reduced rates, one of Kurdistan's oilfields has resumed production to full capacity following the agreement between Kurdistan and Iraq on the resumption of oil exports.
The Hassira oilfield has returned to full production, an industry insider told Shafaq News on Wednesday. The oilfield resumed output at 14,000 barrels per day (bpd), up from 4,000 bpd to 5,000 bpd in the previous days.
The federal government of Iraq and the semi-autonomous region of Kurdistan reached an agreement earlier this week to resume exports via an Iraq-Turkey pipeline and the port of Ceyhan on the Mediterranean.
Oil flows from Kurdistan were stopped for just over a week, forcing companies to either curtail or suspend production because of limited capacity at storage tanks.
Kurdistan's crude oil exports - around 400,000 bpd shipped through an Iraqi-Turkey pipeline to Ceyhan and then on tankers to the international markets - were halted in late March by the federal government of Iraq.
A few days earlier, the International Chamber of Commerce had ruled in favor of Iraq against Turkey in a dispute over crude flows from Kurdistan. Iraq had argued that Turkey shouldn't allow Kurdish oil exports via the Iraq-Turkey pipeline and Ceyhan without approval from the federal government of Iraq.
Following several rounds of failed negotiations, Iraq and Kurdistan reached an agreement to restart oil exports less than ten days after the suspension of the exports.
"The recent disruptions to oil exports from the Kurdistan Region have hurt the country as a whole. This agreement brings much needed revenues," Masrour Barzani, Prime Minister of the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, said on Tuesday, following the signing of the agreement.
"We also agreed that we now have a framework for a draft budget law and, in the near future, discussions can begin on a new federal oil and gas law," Barzani added.
By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com
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Tsvetana is a writer for Oilprice.com with over a decade of experience writing for news outlets such as iNVEZZ and SeeNews. More