Turkey's energy minister: no agreement on northern Iraqi oil

There will be no agreement on northern Iraqi oil following the Turkish PM's meeting  with the Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) PM, said Turkey’s Energy Minister Taner Yildiz in Ankara on Friday, as disputes still linger between Baghdad and Irbil over the mechanism of Kurdish oil exports to Turkey.Turkish PM Recep Tayyip Erdogan will be meeting with the Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) PM Nechirvan Barzani on Saturday."An agreement on northern Iraqi oil is not in this meeting's agenda," Yildiz said speaking at a meeting with the board members of the Energy Market Regulatory Agency of Turkey (EMRA). "This is a regular meeting regarding the current agreements with the central government in Baghdad.”Tensions mounted over Irbil's right to export oil independently of the Iraqi central government after Turkey signed a series of deals in November of 2013 with Iraqi Kurdistan to build a multi-billion dollar oil and gas pipelines to ship the autonomous region's reserves to world markets.This infuriated Baghdad, which claims sole authority on Iraq's oil.On January 2, Taner Yildiz announced that crude oil from northern Iraq had started flowing to Turkey's Mediterranean export hub in Ceyhan.The 400,000 to 420,000 barrels of oil stored, however, remain in containers.They have yet to leave Turkish shores as the central government in Iraq and the KRG have not reached an agreement on the export medium of the northern Iraqi oil.