Ruling halts oil exports from Iraq’s Kurdish area via Turkey

Iraqi officials announced Saturday that Baghdad has won an international arbitration case that will halt oil exports from the semi-autonomous Kurdish region by way of Turkey.
Officials in Baghdad and Irbil, the seat of the Kurdish regional government, have long been at odds over sharing of oil revenues. In 2014, the Kurdish region decided to unilaterally export oil through an independent pipeline to the Turkish port of Ceyhan.
Baghdad called the move “smuggling” and “robbery” and filed a case against Turkey in the International Court of Arbitration, arguing that Turkey was violating the provisions of the Iraqi-Turkish pipeline agreement signed in 1973.