BAGHDAD, Nov 30: Sunni leaders in Iraq voiced anger on Wednesday over a Norwegian company’s oil deal struck exclusively with Kurds in the north and warned such projects could deepen sectarian divisions.
Small Norwegian oil firm DNO on Tuesday became the first foreign company to drill for oil in post-war Iraq through an agreement negotiated with Iraqi Kurdistan, a de facto autonomous region run by Kurdish leaders.
Other companies, such as Norway’s Norsk Hydro, are also in talks to drill for oil in the region.
Concerns about how Iraq’s oil resources will be shared has been a source of discontent among Sunnis, who fear autonomous deals by Shias in the south and Kurds in the north will cut them off from the country’s oil wealth.
“They can’t have it both ways, they are currently benefiting from Iraqi oil like the rest of us and are keeping all their reserves for themselves,” said Suha Allawi, a professor at Baghdad University and a candidate running in parliamentary elections.
The issue already deepened sectarian divisions between Iraqi leaders in heated negotiations on the constitution.
Iraq’s new charter allows companies to strike deals with regional governments, and so far there had been no formal protests over the DNO deal, said Helge Eide, managing director at DNO.
NO APOLOGIES: But some Sunnis said they would resist such contracts.
“This shows that the Kurds want to break away from the rest of Iraq and take its natural resources,” said Hussein al Falluji, a member of the Sunni team that held negotiations on the constitution.
“If they do not reverse their position we will fight this through diplomatic and political channels. We call on them to join the central government in Baghdad.”
There were no apologies for the deal in Kurdistan, however, where the DNO deal was hailed as a step towards distancing the region from the central government.
“There is no way Kurdistan would accept that the central government will control our resources,” Kurdish Prime Minister Nachirvan Barzani said at a ceremony on Tuesday marking the start of drilling.
The DNO struck the deal to explore for oil in northern Iraq in June last year, he said.
Under the production sharing agreement, Kurds take home about 90 per cent of the value of the project, he said.
Boosting oil production is Iraq’s biggest hope for injecting life into a flagging economy.
The country holds the world’s third largest oil reserves, but its output has been bogged down by frequent attacks on an already decrepit energy infrastructure.—Reuters
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